My word is my pond, sorry, bond...

A long-standing  friend of mine has just bought a house  more than sixty miles away from her job. She's thrilled about the new 'chez-moi' but worried about the commuting.

How will you make the transition? I texted  the other day, in between  emails and overdue edits.

'How will I make the train station?' she replied. 'I'm not quite decrepit yet...'.

We both laughed in an LOL kind way.  Such misunderstandings  happen every day. But I sometimes wonder how the mighty Shakespeare might have felt faced with the same situation. Or Graham Greene for that matter, or Ernest Hemingway ( who was known to have a difficult nature at the best of times.) Would their combined writerly genius have stood up to the test of text?  Or auto-correct. Or any of the myriad inventions these days that are aimed at 'improving' our spelling and grammar.

Computers could  write novels! screeched a newspaper heading the other day with enough resonance to make the publishing world take note.  Of course they could.  But could they write a good novel?
 
'It’s not hard to tell a story. It’s hard to tell good stories,'  Tom Meltzer re-quoted in The Guardian recently. 'How do you get a computer to understand what good means?'

But back to the auto-correct. Even those of us who don't while away our time at the keyboard all day must  have shouted No - that's not what I meant...'   to the smug-looking screen as it churns out gobbledegook in the name of progress.  Must we  be told how to write?

I think my five-year-old granddaughter has the right idea:before she speaks, or puts pen to paper, she listens to her teacher. I sent everyone an Easter card,' she told me recently. 'But Miss Jones says yours is an original, not a duplicate.'  Maybe she just likes big words. Or else she's been reading Hemingway.

I reproduce this with thanks to my friend and grammar expert Wendy Guilbert for bringing it to my attention.
 

 

2015 - THE YEAR OF THE BOOK



Carolyn and Katie Clapham

  

Make 2015 the year you  rediscover reading.

So say the owners of a thriving independent bookshop as major booksellers report record sales in physical books during the  recent holiday period.

Carolyn and Katie Clapham opened Storytellers, Inc. in the seaside town of St Annes in Lancashire in 2010. At the end of last year the mother-and-daughter team expanded their popular children's book shop into a 'book place for everyone,' stocking everything from YA through to adult fiction and non-fiction. They are now anticipating a busy year ahead.

The shop's original aim was to provide children with a welcoming environment in which to meet, read and play.  Creative director Katie, formerly production editor of a medical journal, works with local schools on writing and reading projects. Managing director Carolyn took the plunge into business after more than twenty years experience at a senior level in the civil service and in the private sector.

The owners are very proud of their professional calendar of children's illustrators, which takes pride of place in the shop window.  Now in its third year, the calendar features many pieces of original artwork from award-winning illustrators and new industry talent.

Free illustrations were donated by  Emily Gravett, Steven Lenton, Tim Hopgood, Mini Grey, Chris Haughton, Lucy Cousins, Chris Judge, Mo Willems, Tom Percival, Rebecca Cobb and Lydia Monks to support The Illustrations Calendar 2015.  Every month the shop sends books and worksheets inspired by the illustrator of the month to participating schools in the area.  In addition several other  bookshops stock the calendar to run their own Illustrated Year project with school customers.

Carolyn and Katie also run a popular Fiction Book Club for adults where local readers meet to discuss their 'book of the month.' This month's choice is Naomi Wood's best-selling novel Mrs. Hemmingway, which brings to life in extraordinary detail the four wives of Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest writers of our time.

Naomi will be joining the book club's evening session to discuss her work.  Members pay £7 (including the book rrp £7.99) and non members are also welcome for a £4 entrance fee. Storytellers, Inc. also run two junior book clubs, a teen club and a group for adult readers who enjoy books written for a slightly younger audience.

Meanwhile the shop is championing the new World Book Day award which celebrates reading for pleasure in schools. Five schools will get the opportunity to win up to £10,000 worth of books for their libraries, thanks to the generosity of James Patterson, author of the popular Middle School series.

Carolyn believes that children love to touch and feel books. 'If they are introduced to reading at an early age it can be an interest that lasts a lifetime,' she says. 'We hope as many families as possible will be visiting their local bookshops during 2015.'

I hope so too.

Storytellers, Inc.

 

The opening chapter - Weather or Not?

Notice in a Guernsey open air cafe - September 2012

Did you know that a large percentage of would-be novelists start their  first chapter with a description of the weather? This, we are told, is not a good idea.  Yet great novelists have, throughout time, begun their novels in just this way and their names have gone down in history. Take Thomas Hardy in the opening chapter of Far from the Madding Crowd:

Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.

 I've cheated a little with this example because it's  on of my favourites, yet Hardy often
referred to the weather in his opening chapters. And so did Dickens. Foggy marshes, damp and dreariness in the cemetery, all of these make Dickens Great Expectations addictive from the beginning and provide us with a fear that is almost tangible. Who could not be moved by  the evil convict Magwitch or the terror enveloping young Pip?

 Look at the opening chapter of Bronte's Jane Eyre: There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

In Ernest Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms,' rain  represents death while snow is symbolic of hope. His wonderful 'The Sun also Rises,'  apart from being one of his best novels, refers to - er - the weather. Hemingway was a journalist before he became a novelist so at least I'm in good company!

The truth is that all rules are made to be broken. Success makes anything possible. But for the rest of us, writing is something we do from the heart and shouldn't be restricted by endless rules.  In our genre-obsessed literary world it's hard to write anything these days that doesn't fit into a specific category.

My message to would-be novelists who want to write about the weather is, therefore, simple. Write what you feel, 'weather' or not, and don't listen to too much advice. As Ernest Hemingway once said: The first draft of anything is shit.  Not exactly how I would have put it but, well, I certainly know what he means.

Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and .diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.