Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts

Friday, 26 April 2013

W is for....


1) Writing and writer: I am running my first two sections together today, because it’s the same stuff! I have been writing all my life, and was greatly helped by the school I attended in getting my writing accurate - we had to write an essay every weekend. But this did not help creativity, so it was quite a while before I started to write fiction. I started my creative writing with poetry as that was encouraged in school, but we were never asked to write an actual story. However, I have overcome that and now have published my first novel, and have the second to work on for publishing. My third is half written, and is suffering from my distraction by the AtoZchallenge!
Here is a poem that has been published in ‘Circle Time’, the third anthology by the Dalkey Writers’ Workshop. A Marché Nocturne is like a food court in a village square. They are held during the summer in many towns and villages in the Périgord region, and we love attending them.

Marché Nocturne
Serried poplars, pinkening sky
garlic and mussel scented air
guitar and accordion set up their cry-
it is time to dance at the night fair.

Plump and bald answer the call,
wives in hand, remembering when
these were sylph-girls at a Hunters’ Ball:
thought they would always be young men.

Ancient lessons guide them round
on easy moving feet
that music such a familiar sound,
a happy lilting beat.

They look down with loving eyes,
smile through all the years
connectedness that never dies
enhanced by local wine, or beers

which ooze out of million pores
and stain two dozen shirts,
wives fatter now than years before
and wearing longer skirts

but in his eyes the very girl
he held so close back then,
this gentle move the self-same whirl:
Old bodies still contain young men.

3) Wyethia is a remedy which can be useful for the type of hayfever with an itching palate

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

B is for....

1) B is for belief. This always comes up when I tell people about my book. "But what if I don't believe in reincarnation (or guardian angels) ?" they ask. The answer is - it doesn't matter a jot. The book is fiction, and can be read as a story, just like any other work of fiction. No one who read Animal Farm felt they had to believe pigs could talk, nor do Terry Pratchett's readers believe there is an actual disc shaped world out there !  Do I 'believe' in past lives myself? I'm not sure that belief is the right word, but for the moment I think the idea of reincarnation explains a great deal of the bad stuff about our world, as well as some of the good things. We'll all find out eventually anyway, so what anyone believes about it is a very temporary situation...
2) B is also for Brownies. I was made join the Brownies when I was about 7, and hated it. Particularly my 'enrolment' which was spectacularly badly handled, and terrified me half to death, because I didn't know what was happening. About 14 years ago, I went to Drama summer school, and did a story-telling course with the wonderful Sue Colgrave as teacher. I told the story of my Brownies experience, which went down really well, and afterwards a classmate came up to me and asked "how long have you been a writer?". That gave me the courage to start.
3)Belladonna - a great remedy for infections with a very high temperature. Specific for scarlet fever.