Well that's a relief!

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia" E L Doctorow

I did wonder whether it was safe to admit that I hear my characters talking in my head and assume their personalities when I write them.  I suppose it's all about how you actually say it!

I was in a little shop in Whitby (yes, the Whitby, it's not far from where I live really) and someone asked what I was getting.  I replied "thtuff" in a deep, dopey but enthusiastic voice.  The woman behind the counter heard and looked at me strangely.  I looked at her, grinned and said "sorry, that's just the dog's voice in my head".  Silence, tumbleweed, was that the sound of ambulance sirens?

What I should have said was "that's the way I imagine my dog would talk if she could" but no, I had to make myself sound as unhinged as possible.  I paid and left quite quickly then waited until I was a distance from the shop before howling with laughter.

I do attribute voices to characters as I imagine them.  My dog was actually the smartest dog I've ever met and an incredible judge of character.  I really wish I'd listened to her about the builder - she was right!  To my mind her voice was quite deep because her bark was big and she spoke bluntly and with an innocence that made her sound quite dopey.  She also had a lisp.  No creature with a tongue that could lick your face at fifty paces could fail to have a lisp.  She therefore liked thocks and thoap and thponges and thtuff.  It became a common thing among friends and family to refer to thtuff in the dog's imaginary speaking voice.  It was perfectly acceptable for me to say that to a complete stranger "it's just the dog's voice in my head".  Only it wasn't really acceptable, was it?!

I'm laughing just thinking about the Whitby incident.  It sprang to mind the minute I read this quote.  As a writer I create characters in every detail inside my head and then project them onto the page.  They have conversations in my head (not with me, with each other).  That may well tap in to the same areas of the brain that conjure up voices to the schizophrenic.  It might be schizophrenia itself safely channelled.

I admit I'm neurotic, I admit sometimes even mildly psychotic (in a non-violent think it but don't do it sort of way).  The difference between me and the person that looks at me funny is that I don't try to pretend that my brain does nothing unusual.  I write it all down, call it my art, and no-one bats an eyelid.  I say it to someone and that makes me weird, maybe slightly dangerous, definitely to be watched, possibly even sedated.

Where is the line drawn between schizophrenic and creative?  If a schizophrenic were given the means to write would they create the most amazing characters ever written?  If they'd written all their lives, would the characters have stayed on the paper instead of usurping the mind of the creator?

This quote means so much to me on so many levels.  I can laugh at myself and understand why people might give me a wide berth when I come out with things like the dog's voice in my head.  I bet those same people do very little in their lives that's creative and passionately so.  Food for thought.  I wonder what the dog would have said?

Poetry in the schoolroom

I just read on the Guardian website that the UK Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced plans to make learning verse compulsory in primary schools (first school). There's a 'complete the verse' quiz to see how much poetry we remember as adults that we were made to learn as young children. I scored 8 out 10 on this quiz just by reading the preceding lines and guessing. Although we were taught poetry, made to learn and recite it, none of the poems we covered are in the quiz.

So. Do I like and appreciate reading and writing poems because I was made to learn it at school? No. I was writing them from the moment I could put a sentence together on paper. My parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and older cousins - family - taught me nursery rhymes that were fun and appealing and soon I wanted to make up my own. I had to learn new words to make rhymes. I had to learn spelling too, which I mostly did, shock-horror, by reading. Again my family encouraged me to read.

When the subject of poetry came up in the schoolroom, at first I was enthusiastic - it had always been fun in my personal experience. Oh, boy. You will take home and learn the first verse of Wordsworth's Daffodils.. Ok, that's easy enough. The next day, we will recite the first verse of Wordsworth's Daffodils together. Ok, I learned it, that should be fine. Not fine. I remembered it. Most of the class remembered it. Some didn't. Some of them hated it and didn't bother. Some of them got half way through and fell flat. Some of them didn't get beyond the first few words. We all remembered the last word was daffodils. Did we stop? No. Say it again and again until everyone gets it right. Can I cry yet?

Tudor writing tools - are we going
backwards by forcing poetry on kids?

What this achieved was not the learning of an art form, a thing to be appreciated. What it achieved was the turning of poetry into a chore, a thing to associate with intense boredom and frustration as a result of reading it. I still can't sit and read a lot of it without feeling there must be something more productive I could be doing. I still can remember the very beginning of Daffodils, but not the subsequent verses that I learned in the weeks after the mass boredom event.

Later on it came to critical appreciation time. I hated that too. Who am I to say what was going through someone's mind when they wrote their great and famous poem that really isn't all that great but is in all the books? Comments from the teacher showed he didn't accurately surmise what was going through my mind when I wrote the poem I handed in last week. Why should I take his word, then, when he marks my appreciation? How can you put tick or a cross on perception? But ticks and crosses there were. My interpretation of something you didn't write so couldn't possibly know the reason of, is wrong?

What did that achieve, then? Well, when I read poetry, I'm averse to looking for the meaning, even though no-one's going to tell me that what it means to me is wrong. Unless of course I decide to blog my reaction. It was like posting your honest review of a book and someone marking it unhelpful. Why? Because I took away something different from it than you did? No two people read the same book, the same poem, hear the same song. Art is subjective and I guess that takes me full circle back to yesterday's post about word counts.

What would I do differently? I'd get kids to read and maybe even act out some simple poems suited to their age. To see them as well as hear them. Maybe smell them too, knowing some kids! I'd let them see for themselves how a poem works, let them know it's the next step up from nursery rhymes, make them feel like they're going through a life experience by finding poetry. Then I'd ask them to write their own using sights and sounds and if necessary smells. It has to be made about them, not about some flouncy piece of writing from centuries ago. I'd ask them to read out their poems, pin them on the wall where everyone could read them then I'd get everyone to vote anonymously for the best one and I'd give a prize. Maybe a book of children's poems or a CD of them.

For the older kids, I'd show them some examples of critical appreciation and I pick contrasting ones on the same piece so that they could easily see there is no write and wrong. If I felt they'd missed an obvious point I'd explain that you haven't got to lose sight of the woods for the trees. If I didn't get what they were driving at, I'd tell them that's something I hadn't thought of, it would be nice if you'd explained a bit more about what you were thinking. I'd certainly not make a cross in red pen and leave it at that.

As a teacher I'd no doubt make a lot of work and some expense for myself, but I'd try to think outside the box, the box being the classroom. How can I make this applicable to life for them? Tell them it's great, on a rainy day to sit by the window reading poetry while you have a hot drink. Tell them that really songs are poems with a soundtrack and a slightly different pattern to make them catchy. When they're older, tell them life is a poem with its rhythms and subtleties and it's enigmatic meaning that's different for everyone.

I'd be a great teacher but for one thing - I have no tolerance for unruly behaviour, whoever it may be. Miss Jekyll becoming Miss Hyde, although a great link into a lesson plan on Victorian literature, might not work out for the best.

Try that quiz and see how you do!

Dear Grandma, Shush

Dear Grandma,

The other day I couldn't write a thing.  Your voice in my head was telling me again that what I'm doing is a waste of time and isn't proper writing.  So I'm addressing you with this post and I hope there's some way you can read it from beyond.  I'm not sure what you believed proper writing to be.  I never saw you read a book, although you did read some autobiographies, or so I'm told.    Well, Grandma, when I was a kid, I hadn't really been around long enough to write a substantial story of my life but I had so many ideas for stories that created lives.

You'll be pleased to know, Grandma, that Paul has written a fantastic autobiography, but he's had a full and action packed life that people will want to read about.  Me, I've never been very far or done very much really, and that seems more and more unlikely all the time.  I didn't mean to get this illness in childhood that took away my physical energy.  I didn't mean to start falling apart in my thirties.  I didn't design my own genome and if I had, I would have still added the drive to write.

After talking to Paul though, Grandma, you need to know that the writing drive comes from your bloodline.  I'm taking my publishing name from your bloodline and very seriously considering making it legally my name.  So what I do is as much because of you as in spite of you.

Paul and I talked for nearly an hour and we have very similar things to say about our early lives.  the difference between he and I though, is that he went out and did what he wanted to do early on.  Me, I've waited until no-one can stop me and I'm only sorry that Mum isn't here, because she would be so excited for me and for Paul.

So I'm ever so apologetically going to have to tell you to shush, Grandma.  I can do this and you never know - it could be the start of something good that you would never have let me achieve.  Getting a book out is an achievement in itself.  You should be pleased for me.  Your granddaughter knows what she wants to do, always has, and she's doing it.  If we ever meet again, if there is an afterlife, I hope you can smile and introduce me as your granddaughter, the writer.  I'll even give you signed ethereal copies if you think you can stand to read some fiction and be gracious about it.

Now please excuse me.  I've set myself a task to write as much as I can today, whether you approve or not.

Juliet
Your granddaughter, the writer

Winged Warriors

So proud to announce on this blog, my heroic cousin's memoirs of an astounding air force career, Winged Warriors: The Cold War from the Cockpit is now available to pre-order.

 

Paul McDonald's 34 year RAF career has taken him far and wide to see and do things most of us only dream of.  This is the stuff novels try to encapsulate, only here it's all true.

Read extracts, a short biography, synopsis and view photographs at wingedwarriors.co.uk

I'm so proud of Paul.  Not only did he do all of the things in this book, he also chose to share his experiences  and tell it like it really was.  From cadet to OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 1995, his are memoirs worth reading.

Visit the website for more information, or click the image above to go straight to the Amazon page.

The voice in my head

Having a zero confidence day.  They happen every few days really.  Wake up with this voice in my head telling me what I'm doing is a stupid waste of time and if I'd spent this much time on my school work I'd have an amazing career already.

I know whose voice it is.  It's Grandma and she thought at the time she was doing the right thing.  What she did was plant this device in my head that doesn't want me to do anything different, anything new, anything creative.  It's ok to knit and sew because that's what women have always done (slight distortion of history, Grandma) but writing is not acceptable.

I've always written, since I knew how to put words on paper.  It was only ever approved of if it was in some way related to education or could be taken to school to show to the teacher.  Personal efforts were sometimes waved in my face with "what's this rubbish?" sneered at me if I hadn't found a safe enough hiding place for them.  Heaven forbid I got so tired I left them on the table.

I know why she did it.  She didn't want me to struggle to make a living in later life and that's the traditional idea of a writer.  She wanted me to pursue the academic route and I think her plan was that I'd become a teacher.  She didn't take into account that I lacked one vital ingredient for teaching - a tolerance for kids en masse.  I could have applied myself more at school and in higher education.  I was only happy doing something creative or reading the books I wanted to read.  I still did pretty well but I know she thought I should have done better.

It's 14 years now since I left full time education and it's almost a year since Grandma passed away.  Still I hear her voice telling me I'm wasting my time and still it stifles my ability to write.  I can blog.  I can jot down my thoughts, but I can't make words into pictures or create worlds in my mind.  I could cry, I feel so defeated by it and it's just a voice in my head.  If she's watching, she knows I want to work and work hard, and to use my spare time to share what I create because someone might just enjoy it.  She never said it though, not even once I was working, earning, owning my own house, living a good life.  She never said it was ok to do what I always wanted to do if only in the spare time I had.  She always waved a dismissive hand and said hmph, or sometimes she went so far as to say mergh.  I can't shake it from my mind some days and it feels like she's here, making sure I don't waste time on words.  Maybe I need help.  Maybe I need a psychiatrist.  Or maybe I need to do what I've always wanted to do and prove to her that I can.  Will that stop the voice?

Why the new name?

Having created a Wordpress site for my writing alter ego, I realise there might be some eye rolling and smirking going on.  So let me explain the reasons for taking my Great, Great Grandmother's maiden name as my pen name.

• It sounds better.  Juliet McHugh has more balance and ring to it than Juliet Foster.
• Foster is not my real name anyway.  It's the first step-father's name and the school registered me for NI with it, so it got stuck.
• Graham doesn't mean much to me these days except to remind me of a child's world that fell apart.
• The more immediate family names that I'd have preferred to take sound completely wrong with Juliet.
• Juliet Foster sounds like a news reporter or a writer of factual information (note I draw the distinction there).
• There's already an author out there called Juliet Foster and she does write factual books.  She probably doesn't want to be confused with a bloodthirsty fiction writer any more than I want to be confused with someone sensible.
• I want a name that feels like it belongs to me after twenty-odd years of cringing whenever someone shouts me.
• I like the idea of my initials spelling JAM.

Ok, so that last one might not be a genuine reason, but it's still pretty cool.

The cross-stitch books I've published will probably stay under the name Juliet Foster, at least for now.  However, if I go so far as to use Deed Poll, which is entirely possible, I'll update those too.

There's a lot more to it than concealing my identity.  On the contrary, I want to feel like I have an identity to begin with instead of this label that was stuck on and frankly, clashes with its surroundings.

I'm taking a new name, and that my dears, is that!

The whats and moreover the whys

When I write, for me and I hope for my readers too, it's a sensory experience.   I see, hear and feel what I'm thinking.  I smell the cloying stench of the thick, warm, viscous blood as it drips with a flat, heavy pit-pat to the floor in a glossy vermilion pool.  That's when I kill someone anyway, which I usually do.

I've read some pretty flat descriptions and I wondered why I feel so compelled to give the full range of senses.  I decided to revisit a book on neurolinguistic programming (NLP) to complete the 'thinking/learning type' assessment.  Looking at the above, I really should have known I'd not come out on one side or another.

Where people are usually auditory, visual or kinaesthetic (tactile) learners/thinkers, I sit squarely (triangularly?) in the middle.  Asked to rate responses to questions in a multiple choice on this, I have to rate a good deal of them equally.  I sing along to the music in the background whilst reading and making things with my hands.  Yes, I do read and make things at the same time whilst listening and singing along.  My brain subdivides things just like it splits things into analytical and creative.  It's a multi-threaded processor and it functions best when all threads are engaged.  That's how I experience things - all things at once.  I write about the sights, sounds, scents and textures because that's how I would take it in if I were there and when I'm writing, I'm there.

I step into the heads of my characters and explore their thoughts and feelings and where they might make a simple choice, I talk about the process by which they reached the decision.  It might be a nanosecond in a life where the options are weighed up, but what are those options?  Why pick the one they picked?  Choices say a lot about a person and I guess I want to know my characters but I want my readers to know them too.  So I explore them and pick them apart.

The thing I'm accused of most often (and I admit, accurately) is being the devil's advocate no matter what.  Even if it means disagreeing with myself, I'm compelled to make sure all angles are covered.  I think I just don't like to see people hell bent on a notion without examining all the possibilities.  I'm the juror who'd be murdered by the other eleven.  I don't mean to be contrary.  Life would be so much easier if I could just be certain about something.  Just once.  But then I read quotes from philosophers that say to be certain is to be both arrogant and ignorant.  I couldn't be certain whether they're right.  I don't have all the facts!

But other assessments too show that my mind can't think in just one way.  The first assessments as a student showed my grey matter is 50/50 male female and 50/50 left right where most people are biased in one direction or the other.  Half analytical, half creative.  Half emotional, half calculated.  That probably comes across in my writing too.  I was told recently and by a man, that I write like a man.  I have to laugh.  I'm very definitely a girl and an emotional, neurotic one at that.  I have considered the possibility that my muse is masculine.  Possession might not be out of the question either!  It also occurs to me that maybe I can never settle on an argument because the male and female aspects can't reach an agreement?  Maybe they should get a divorce and leave me in peace!