Silence

I never read Lord of the Flies - I had to go and look it up on one of those GCSE pass notes sites today to clarify what I thought I knew about it. (And isn't that weird - how is it possible to know so much about a book you've never read? In the same way as wondering how you know all those bits of classical music you could never identify?) I did this because I was thinking about bullying. Bullying exists as part of a whole spectrum of behaviour, among a whole group of people. It isn't usually just one-on-one agressor and victim. Around those two are a widening circle of others and I'd range them from one end to the other. Aggressor over here on your left, victim on the far right, let's say, and spreading between are the others - starting with eager followers, moving through those who might join in and those who will take advantage of the atmosphere created. As you pass the midway point, you head into those who stick their fingers in their ears and go la-la-la ... the ones who aren't here. They don't want to get involved. But they are. By their silence, they normalise the behaviour of those on the left side of the spectrum. They isolate the victim, out there on the right by themselves. 'It must be me,' the victim thinks. 'They're not attacking anyone else, so this must be my fault, for attracting it, or for being unable to stand up to it. I must be reacting wrongly. In fact, I must be over-reacting - no one else seems to think it's bad or they'd say something. It's my fault.' So he or she is also silenced. I read through the background of Lord of the Flies, most of which I knew by this weird cultural osmosis, and it left me feeling even more bleak than when I started. I like to see the good in everyone, or life would be altogether too dark. But there are times when all I can see is that vision of children escaping civilisation and the good ones going under. Then I remembered: 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' Edmund Burke, Irish political philosopher from the 18th century. It cheers me up to think that three centuries ago someone was able to say it so elegantly and succinctly, because of course that means it's not just me who thinks this way, and rages against it, and then I start to remember all those who have spoken up, at great personal cost, and I decide the world isn't so bad. It's a spectrum, still.

Making an Impact

Motivation vs plot. My strength is in creating characters and themes, in revealing what drives someone's thoughts; what I find hard is plot, sheer, simple driving onwards of action. Often that's why my short stories grind to a halt halfway through - I need the action to carry forwards an otherwise motionless piece of writing. At the moment, I'm considering the impact of one character's actions on another. I usually write short stories with a small cast and in writing something longer, I'm having to manage more people and how they inter-act. In real life, we all see things in different ways - as children, we see life from our own perspective and have to learn, slowly, that others will see things differently. Theory of mind, it's called. Those on the autistic spectrum struggle with it. It's also the reason why small children make those delicious comments that assume you know what they know, and they can't get inside another child's head to see that they might want that particular toy too and will be upset to have it snatched away. But even as adults, we can't see the impact our actions will have because we don't know where others have started from. The person we let out in the traffic queue may be having a seriously bad day and you lighten her mood or she may be on her phone and barely even notice your Random Act of Kindness. My real life examples: I regularly collect a prescription for someone else. Because it's a controlled drug, even the prescription has to be collected from a special place, rather than being put in the post. Each time I send in the repeat form, I wait the allotted five days, a bit more for courtesy, and then I have to start chasing it. I get answer phones; I ring several times; having started three weeks ahead, usually we're down to the wire, with the last tablet or two, before I can even make the forty-minute round trip to get the new prescription, and then it's a dash to the pharmacy to collect it. This all takes place against a backdrop of daily reassurance - yes, I'll phone again, yes, it'll be on its way, don't worry ... This morning, listening to that answerphone, I thought - she sounds nice enough whenever I speak to her - is it just that she has no idea of how important her small piece of paperwork is to those at the other end? Surely if she lived it through my eyes, she'd get her act together? Does she just lack imagination? Opposite end of the scale: someone who always returns calls promptly, answers emails, considers and puts things into action if they might help. In one of our early meetings, when I was fed up and suspicious of all officaldom, I was puzzled by him. I would talk and be met with an intent frowning silence. It took me some time to realise that he was listening to me. What he does probably seems normal to him, but it's had a huge impact, because I was losing hope when I met him. So when my characters do something, they don't act in a vacuum - they bounce off each other and cause repercussions. The 'what if' again - if he says this, how will she react? Where's she coming from, not just in general but today, this morning, now? I'm hoping these 'what ifs' will drive my plot onwards, using my imagination to stand in each character's place. After that, I'm going to drive up and stand at the counter and just ask for the repeat prescription form, because I despair of ever getting that call back!

Try Something New

It's Monday morning. My son is off to work experience and looking apprehensive. Time for me also to try something new and that's learning to post a link. I'm going to see if this works. Monday mornings are hard. My brain has gone elsewhere over the weekend (walks in the rain, driving the children around ...) so I started my writing week just now with a trawl through some of my favourite blogs. Womag's blog linked me to some writing tips from Lydia Jones. I know she's been somewhere else this week - I'm thinking, The People's Friend? - so I was interested and went to read and yes, her tips are great. Let's try and find them. OK, I've tried this twice and it's still not working. Sigh. Technology is never intuitive for me. So let's just do this: http://lydiajones.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Earn-Money-Writing-Stories-For-Womens-Magazines#comments. Then maybe I'm covered. The one that grabbed me was her discussion of how NOT to use real life events, because this chimed with my own thought processes in my last post. She was suggesting playing the 'What If?' game - you take the real-life event and then say, 'But what if ...' and that leads you off in many new directions which turns a single event into a story that has wider relevance. So I'm off to apply that process to my own half-written story and see how it goes.

That Rewrite

This story, this series of posts, could soon become a serial. So they wanted ANOTHER rewrite. That would be the third. It's lovely to get feedback, it's generous of them to take the time, but there comes a point when saying yes, again, begins to look like desperation to get published. It isn't worth the time. It's a shame - it was a good story (certainly the last time I sent it!) and they keep telling me how much they like it, but if they like it that much, they need to just publish the darn thing! I'm deep into other work now, anyway, for one of my other markets, and if I look round, I'll lose concentration. There's one just awaiting a title and a final re-read, and I'm also halfway through another one. There, I've just seen a way to take the story a stage further and create a whole new level to it. Sometimes you have to write in layers - this one started with a fairly specific idea and was planned to fill a shorter slot - probably 1000 words. However, when you begin from a very literal point, you may find that at first you're telling just that one story and doing so fairly literally. As you edit down to the essential oil of the story, cutting the plot and raising the theme to more prominence, you then see beyond to how you could widen your focus out from that one event. At the moment it's hovering between 1000 and 2000 - I'll wait to see which way it needs to go. One hour till the school bus gets in!

Following Your Children (part two)

OK, so follow your children, but not up a tree. Or, more to the point, down again headfirst.
Trees seem to be a feature of this blog. I climbed trees all the time when I was my daughter's age. I sat up a particularly spectacular pear tree reading on Saturday mornings (Monica Edwards, Antonia Forest, Rosemary Sutcliff, Barbara Willard, KL Peyton ...) I climbed oak trees in the woods and balance-walked along fallen trunks just as she does now. They are warm and living things and infinitely comforting. Oh yes, sign me up to the ranks of tree-huggers any day!
I never, luckily, fell out of one as she did just recently, and now everyone says, to her or to me, 'oh, she won't be doing that again ...'
But she will and why would I stop her? She is her own person and all I can do is teach her safety, and how to balance the sheer joy of living with the risks. She is not just a glass-half-full kind of person, she doesn't even see the glass is anything other than full. She enjoys every new experience of life.
As the paramedics wheeled her into the ambulance, I held her hand and said, with that rather desperate parental attempt at calm, 'You have to remember all of this - it'll be so useful when you next write a story ...' and sure enough, she told me two days later, cast on arm, 'I can't really even say I wish it hadn't happened, because it's all been so interesting. I didn't know what it felt like to fall out of a tree before ...'
I can, however, tell you just what it feels like to watch and that's an experience I'd rather do without.
But can I use it in a story ...?

Teach Your Children - or they will teach you

How many of us, when we have children, think that they will be what we make them? The terrifying feeling of responsibility that goes with a newborn prevents you at first from seeing that right from the moment they land, they are their own people. I was always slightly worried that if I had a boy, I would inevitably end up standing on the side of a football pitch, (I haven't) but I hadn't considered what things I would get to learn about as they grew up. It's like feeding on demand - I do activities on demand.

When people ask how my daughter came to be learning the bassoon - I find myself shrugging and saying, 'Well, I'm not really sure ...' The simple answer is, because it was offered and she wanted to. From the moment she handled one and heard it play, it was her instrument. So I dipped a cautious toe into the world of the Music Mom (Soccer Moms have nothing on some of them for drive and sharp elbowed determination) where saying you play nothing and know less is not an option.

Yesterday I found myself in Trafalgar Square at Maslenitsa - the Russian festival for the end of winter and the beginning of Lent. The Russian alphabet remains a beautiful and elegant mystery to me, but not to my son, who asked for Russian lessons several months ago and was greeted with smiles and encouragement when he tried out his new language on the stall-holders in Trafalgar Square.

Sure, I offer them my own interests - not always successfully, though my son has learned not to say that Joni Mitchell screeches - but I follow where they lead and I end up in some fascinating places.

Rewrites Again

So the email wasn't of acceptance. It was - another rewrite! 'Can you put back in some of what you took out?' I can but I'm struggling to do so within the word limit they want from me.
I'm touched that they are taking the trouble - much easier for a busy fiction ed. simply to reject and move down the pile - and I can rewrite and rework for ever. But will we ever get to a point where we're all happy?
Today's job is to go back and look at the rewrite (two) which I completed before half term got in the way and see if it's going to work. (I'm sure there are other writers who can work during school holidays - but I'm not one of them.)
Wish me luck.