Fiction

The reading writer or the writing reader

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

We are surrounded by words. They are there on the side of your breakfast cereal packet, full of persuasive ideas or nutritional information. They are on the wall of the lift as you make your way from car park to shopping mall. ‘In case of emergency DO this or DON’T do that…’ They are on our clothes – a logo, a designer’s name; they are on the label – how to wash the garment, the size, the fabric constituents.

As I say, we are surrounded by words. We as humans have come a long way from the days when we communicated through pictures. The concept of communication fascinates me. Why do we communicate? Is it to know our allies from our enemies, or to form friendships, assist pair-bonding, or create a safe environment for our children? We developed words because if a buffalo or something similarly huge is rushing towards you, no one’s got time to whip out a slate and chalks to create a nice little scene to indicate the usefulness of running away. So words are more efficient, maybe.

But words change us. From our earliest days on the planet, gazing fondly at our mothers, we learn words. We learn how to physically say them by watching and listening, and we learn what they mean by observing consequences and effects.

We connect not just words together to form a sentence, but ideas together to create a narrative or story. We might hear the words, ‘Let’s go to the mall’, but what we really hear are ideas based on prior knowledge of that as a situation. ‘Let’s go to the mall’ becomes a narrative: ‘Let’s go to the mall – where we will walk about the shops, talking as we go, laughing and enjoying being together, and discussing life issues or relationships, or personal goals and dreams, where will we notice and comment on the latest trends, where we will exchange currency (or more likely swipe a small piece of plastic) for new goods, that we can then take home and discuss at length, creating a new shared experience. Whilst at the mall we will likely go and get some food somewhere, so it will become a social event, we will sit and eat, and talk some more, possibly on a deeper emotional level, and this day will become part of our shared memories and we will often revisit the occasion in our thoughts, and enjoy the time over and over again, and the whole experience from beginning to end will enhance our relationship and sense of closeness.’

It doesn’t always work like this. Sometimes we have a row as soon as we get there, sulk all the way round the shops and come home later frustrated and disappointed, still in a frosty silence. The great tapestry of human experience!

Where am I going with this? It’s just this: simply, words are key to the storytelling of human life, whether an ordinary trip out to buy new jeans, or whether we are sitting curled up in our favourite armchair reading words on a pages, pages bound together in one book, a book enclosed by a hard or soft cover, possibly enhanced with a relevant image on the front.

This is not the first time I’ve pondered on the weird and truly wonderful impact of words on my life. At the moment I’m wrestling with the final edit of my novel The Spy Within, (coming soon to an internet store near you), but I’m making time to read. In the last few weeks I’ve read my dear friend Emma Baird’s romance, Highland Chances, and another good friend’s Paul Nelson’s Cats of The Pyramids, yet another writer friend’s book Undercover Geisha, by Judith Cranswick. I’m now reading Mary Stewart’s The Wind Off The Small Isles, as well as P G Wodehouse’s A Damsel In Distress, and dipping in and out of non-fiction books: The Great British Bobby by Clive Emsley, and The 1960s fashion sourcebook by John Peacock. 

Each of these books will leave a lasting imprint on my life. I’ve blogged before about how what we read–especially when it’s something we love–leaves its mark on our soul, a fragment of its written beauty that will see us through the hard times. And this year has been one of hard times, hasn’t it? I think in the coming months we will all need as many beautiful phrases, sweet or witty situations, dastardly intrigues and happy-ever-afters as we can get our hands on.

Happy reading!

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Rejection – or, Moving On

/ Caron Allan / Leave a comment

 

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Rejection.   It’s something we all fear, I guess.  We are born craving acceptance – if we are not accepted we will die.  Or at least be put up for adoption.  Writers are no different in this respect to new born babies.  Or maybe we are more like the loving mothers urging our offspring on to others and not able to see if its not really as beautiful as we think.

It’s no secret that I have had a bad review for my book on Amazon.  I had known that sooner or later it would happen, but when it did, being pre-warned was no help.  I went through the usual stages of grief:  I started with a kind of ‘so what’ shrug, then went into a depression and a downward spiral, felt like everything I wrote was worthless and what was the point anyway, I was surely kidding myself I could write?  I asked a Facebook contact, who is a very well-established, successful and admired writer, what do you do, how do you deal with this?  She told me what I already knew.  You can’t please everyone.

The thing is, it would be so easy to try to change yourself, your style, your genre, everything, in order to please the one or two dissenters who don’t get you or your writing and probably shouldn’t have read it in the first place.  If you are a lover of fantasy or paranormal fiction, I don’t understand why you would choose to read something totally different and then complain that its different?  That’s like going to a book shop and asking for sausages.

So I got over it.

To begin with, I don’t flatter myself I have universal appeal, and just as there are books I would not enjoy reading, I realise that my books may not appeal to everyone.  I have to be myself.  I’ve tried writing the ‘proper’ way, as I was taught by a number of well-meaning and in some cases, very successful writers and teachers of writing.  But I have to be me (visualise someone running down the road into a golden sunset, arms outstretched in triumph, singing “I Gotta Be Me – just gotta be free”) – I need to write to be happy and also I need to be happy to write, so I set aside the slings and arrows and choose not to let them hurt me or distract me from what I am trying to achieve.

I’m now moving on.

 

 

 

Neolithic Village imagined

/ Caron Allan / 1 Comment

HIF 2010 178 (1)

The corridors linking the houses are dark, black-dark, and yet the children run back and forth giggling and jostling as children have always done.  They barely pause in their running with the narrows and curves of the corridors.  They laugh in and out of the houses, running amongst the groups, tribes, families.  Outside, beyond the houses, the sea and the wind roar, and strange creatures prowl the earth.  But not in here.

In the houses themselves, the central hearth is the main light and although bright enough to prepare the food by, the illumination doesn’t reach to the farthest parts of the room where the animals are safely housed against thick stone walls.  Their soft noises and comfortable smells lull the elders who sit by the fire to prod the embers or stir the cooking-pot by turns.

Soon the eye becomes accustomed to the dimness and it is possible to see not just vague shadows but the bodies of the cattle in their pens, or the shapes of the drawings in the sand of the fireside floor, the simple outlines that accompany the story that is being told.  A half-grown child, listening to the stories with wide eyes, is given instructions and items of interest are brought from the dresser to the one who speaks, who holds each thing up for all to see and recounts all that is known, the history of the item, the way it happened to be found or created, all that makes it special is told now to those who are gathered.  They’ve heard it before.  Even last night. But still they all look and a discussion takes place, even the child speaks.  He will be a fine man one day soon.  They look on him with pride.  One day, he will be the teller of stories.

The food is passed round, grain and meat and fish and coarse bread, flat and hot from the stones by the fire.  Everyone eats and a strange hush falls over the house for a time.  There is a ritual about eating.  There is a ritual about being in the safety of a warm and solid home with the cattle and the fire.  To be with the kinfolk and listen to the stories. This is what it means to be at home.

It is evening, the day has drawn to its close and everyone is gathered in the safe warmth of the roundhouse. Nearby, there are other houses, with other people gathered, and the children are the running link between them.  More stories are told, more conversation and discussion over the nature of the stars and their brightness, of the tides of the sea, of the path of the moon who guides the hunters and blesses the crops.

And nearby, in another such house, the bones of the ancestors are keeping watch over the living. The ancestors listen to the old stories and smile as the brightness of the moon creeps in at the doorway of their resting chamber.