Spoiled for choice – writer’s support network

Posted on by
5

My writing has been stalled because I had finished one project and was in desperate need of feedback on the other two.

The project, an article on my airman uncle (A Very Unlikely Hero) had been sent to a specialist blogger. My non-fiction (Writing to a Ghost: Letter to the River Kwai) was being read, as a favour, by a wonderfully meticulous friend and my re-re-re revised fiction book (Border Line) was in a queue to a busy writing friend.Two days ago my writing frustration peaked and I also felt a need of independent professional advice for some tricky chapters. So I sent them off to Sally Jenkins, who had done such a swift and helpful job on the synopsis, agent letter and first chapter of Border Line.

Later that same day the blogger, Pierre Lagacé, of Lest we Forget, http://athabaskang07.wordpress.com came up trumps and starting posting a new blog using parts of my article on my Mosquito Navigator uncle at http://johncustancebaker.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/and-if-by-chance/ I am thrilled with this.

Yesterday my friend, Lesley, came round with a wonderfully annotated manuscript of my non-fiction book and some very good advice.

Today, to my amazement, Sally Jenkins came through with the critique of my tricky chapters in Border Line. Her speed of turnaround only equalled by the seriously helpful advice on my chapters. http://www.sallyjenkins.wordpress.com/

Writing is something of a game of snakes and ladders. Today I am on a ladder. Back at my desk, I feel like a bee in clover – totally happy and busy though spoiled for choice about which manuscript to tackle first. It is this wonderful network of support from people we know and, in this new age, those we have never met that make writing possible.

This state of affairs has been very good for the house. DIY flourished, I have insulated a tricky section of bay wall with thermal lining, put up a pane of secondary glazing and ordered more lining, glazing panels etc.

(And my L reg. Nissan passed its MOT!)

The darlings he killed

Posted on by
2

A fascinating and salutary article about how life can sometime rob a writer. Mark Lawson, journalist, broadcaster, writer has had both fiction and non-fiction books snatched from him, half-written, by a variety of circumstances. In a his article he talks about each of these lost enterprises with modesty, humour and insight.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/06/mark-lawson-books-never-were

The approach of Autumn

Posted on by
8

A week ago I was depressed at the idea of the end of summer, today I am cheered by the approaching autumn. I have planted broccoli and spinach and the vegetable garden still looks amazingly orderly. DSCN4246The potatoes plants were all zapped by ants so we only had one colander full. The sweet peas fried in the heatwave, but everything else has been OK. The leeks are growing and there are plenty of runner and french beans, tomatoes, courgettes and salad to come.

The maples are beginning to turn.

Acer palmatum Sangukaku

Acer palmatum Sangukaku

From now on until leaf drop they provide me with almost daily excitement. Another happy event is the first fruit on the apple tree (sold to us four years ago as a plum!) We have no idea what sort of apple this is, so it has been a long wait. They look on the small side, but I like the green/orange colour, as I’m not a fan of red apples. I pulled off a tiny one and ate it today.DSCN4250

 

 

 

 

It has a lovely scent and is thin-skinned and crisp, but with only two tiny bites it was difficult to assess the flavour. Any suggestions about what they might be?

We still have martins feeding young, there have been at least three broods. I hope they have not left it too late to raise them before the cold weather arrives. I made a brave attempt to take a photo of them feeding.

House martins feeding

House martins feeding

Hungrier, thinner, speedo and then cholera – POWs 14

Posted on by
4

Barry and the remaining men of 27 Line Section reached a big well-run camp, Tha Khanun, more than 200 km up the river Kwai Noi. To their disappointment they had to march on up-river and then inland:

When we reached the site of (the misnamed) 211kilo camp it was as usual raining and there were no preparations at all, in particular there were no huts or latrines or cookhouses. Our Jap O.C. pointed out a heap of green tents… There were not nearly enough to accommodate the whole group but fortunately these tents were supplied with separate fly sheets, and these extra sheets could be pitched on improvised bamboo poles to provide extra cover although without ends.

On our first morning at 211 we were roused out very early, in the rain and in darkness for a full scale Tenko [parade headcount]. Through the medium of a Japanese interpreter who spoke very little English, our Jap commander told us that the progress of the railway building had fallen far behind schedule and that this was caused by the idleness and incompetence of the British workers and their officers… This speech was recognized as a “speedo”, which meant longer working hours and more harrying, shouting and beating by the guards.

There was no barge traffic up to 211 camp and our rice ration came up through the jungle paths on a hand cart or carried on our backs by ourselves. A 50kg bag (one hundredweight) is not an impossible burden for a fit man, but by now most of us were far from fit and were anyhow already fully occupied building the new section of railway, so that the rice ration was small and became steadily smaller.

…the rice ration, now down to a very few ounces, would be calculated strictly according to the number of men who went out to work. This put us in the unhappy position of being forced to detail for work men who were too weak to stand. It was quite usual to see a man actually suffering from a malaria rigor being supported between two others on the march out to the railway site. Such men were, of course, no use for actual work.

One day a few dysentery cases started violent vomiting as well as producing sudden dehydration and death within a day or two. Men who had served in India recognised the symptoms of cholera… The cholera spread rapidly and it soon became impossible to bury the dead so, on the advice of those who had experience of such epidemics in India, we started to burn the bodies… The fire was kept burning continuously by a small duty party. We never ran short of fuel.

Wineberry bliss

Posted on by
2

Today, just as I did aged five in my grandparent’s garden, I crammed my mouth full of wineberries. These bushes are the offspring of those same wineberries that I ate so many, many years ago. They seed freely so I have them all over the garden. The young stems are reddish and almost furry, but they become greener and very prickly as they age.

Japanese wineberries

Japanese wineberries

You will never see the berries sold commercially, they are too small and sticky to pick, preserve and travel, but there is nothing more blissful than to fill your mouth with them. In fact I think I will have to go out for a midnight feast after writing this.

Novel People – Faulks on Fiction

Posted on by
Reply

Faulks on Fiction (Sebastian Faulks) is the kind of book you are so unwilling to stop reading that you read every last word – and discover that he would have preferred the title Novel People. 

This is a book about the people who inhabit fiction and it has walked straight into my personal favourites’ list for two main and several minor reasons. First, he uses, with delicious freedom, exactly the right word for what he wants to say. This is non-fiction, so Faulks is not constrained by his potential reading public or his characters’ vocabularies (or even an ageing brain) in his choice of words. He does not use obscure words, simply the right ones. The writing is also entertaining and fully accessible to the layman.

Secondly, as a reader and writer, to have all these characters from classic fiction (some of which I have read and others not) opened up for me to investigate both as people and as examples of their roles (e.g. hero, villain) in the stories they inhabit, is pure joy. This provides an extra dimension for a re-reading or a first reading of such books and an invaluable lesson in anatomy for a struggling writer.

The sections and chapters can be read separately and if you loathe Amis or love Austen (or vice versa) you can dip in and out. I find it very satisfying that he distances himself so convincingly from the ‘fiction is autobiography’ school. He has chosen a good eclectic mix of characters over the whole life of the English novel and he scans wider horizons each time he selects one.

Do I have any quibbles? My feminist side might have asked for a few more female writers. This book is a trawl through significant writers of the last two centuries. It will I hope become a school text. Many female writers are mentioned, but far fewer women than men make the cut and that saddens me. So Woolf, Zadie Smith, George Eliot and Mary Renault are mentioned, but Byatt, Murdoch and Drabble, for instance, don’t get a look in. These are not writers for whom I carry a flag and Faulks is very clear about the reasons for his selections. Also many great male writers are missing too. Still I am sad.

I will re-read this book over and over again. I will keep it among my dictionaries and style-guides for reference as a writer. I think it speaks usefully to writers of every level. As a reader, I will pick my way through the books it unwraps and that I have not yet read. As you can see I am struggling to put down.

Happy Hibiscus

Posted on by
5

Three to four years ago we planted a small hibiscus hedge. Each year the plants have struggled and flower buds have dropped off or never formed. This year, after gaining a bed beside it, and some extra sunshine, it has decided to give us a splendid show and is beginning to look like a hedge.

Hibiscus syriacus Hamabo

Hibiscus syriacus Hamabo

IMG00418-20130828-1907 IMG00420-20130828-1908

Walking, Walking, Long Time Walking – POWs 13

Posted on by
Reply

After constructing the Wampo Viaduct, Barry and the remaining men of 27 Line Section started a very long march up the river Kwai during the rainy season (early summer) of 1943. Barry had been born in Malaya and before he became a prisoner had been studying the language. This led, as he remembers, to a random encounter:

During the march after Wang Po, on the way up river towards 211 kilo, the weather became gradually worse and we were slogging through rain and mud with no comfort at the end of the day’s journey. I often passed the time by talking to myself in Malay and repeating some of the pantuns that I could remember. On this particular occasion I was marching beside a stranger whom I recognised as probably a Dutchman as his dress was different from ours, but he had no rank badges or any other recognition signs. I started to say aloud a particularly apposite pantun, which goes:

“Jalan, Jalan, sa-panjang jalan,
Singa menyunga di pagar orang,
(Walking, walking, long time walking
Looking over neighbours’ fences)

At this moment, half way through the pantun, the man beside me joined in and recited the last two lines,

“Pura pura men-chari ayam,
Ekor mata di-anak orang.”
(Is he perhaps searching for a lost chicken?
But the corner of his eye is looking at his neighbour’s daughters)

At the same time he put a finger to the outer corner of his eye, which was exactly what my munshi had told me that a Malay would do.

Most real Malays know hundreds of these pantuns and by saying a key word from them can indicate a meaning to another Malay, which might not be apparent to someone else. That “ekor mata”, the corner of the eye, is a hint that some one is on the prowl and that girls, and wives too, should be on the look out. This episode cheered me up very much during a wet and miserable period of our long march northwards, and we spent the rest of the day talking Malay to one another; mine very stumbling and uncertain, his accurate and fluent. I lost touch with him and found no other Malay speakers in our group.

writing critique – real help

Posted on by
5

A couple of weeks ago I gave my non-fiction project (on Far East POWs) to a neighbour to read and got out my neglected novel Border Line. I’d had a four-month break from it and, as sometimes happens, this gave me the courage to make some radical alterations.

Now I needed someone with fresh, and ideally professional, eyes to read the changes. My options were limited. My writing friends, my other friends and even some relatives had read earlier drafts. I had already shelled out for Literary consultants (extremely useful but equally expensive). However, through blogging I had come across writer Sally Jenkins, who runs a critiquing service.

http://sallyjenkins.wordpress.com/first-impressions-critique-service/

So I sent her my agent letter and altered synopsis. Following this I sent my first chapter (i.e. all the material I would be submitting to agents). In a remarkably short time, for a very reasonable fee (and I like that I could pay through BACS if I wanted), I received clear, concise, pertinent feedback. Sally also spotted a very important gap in my letter – I’d not mentioned a potential market or similar publication.

This has led me to do some hefty thinking as this is a question I have tried, and failed, to answer before. I know well that my writing crosses boundaries. In Border Line I have written a love story with topical issues (suicide and assisted dying). It is between literary and commercial in style, and readers for my previous two books have been both sexes and mixed ages. Mulling this over and looking at another writers’ website that Sally mentioned, I trawled through descriptions by agents of the types of books they liked. This helped me to focus, as did the fact that I will be talking to a reading group in the autumn about my earlier book Unseen Unsung.

So, I think that the mixture of love, adventure and topical issues would make Border Line ideal for reading groups. Thank you Sally, I shall go into battle again perhaps a little better armed than before.

You might think that after 25 rejections from agents I should be throwing in the towel. However these rejections included 4 requests for the full manuscript, one resulting in some very positive work with an agent. This, in psychological terms, is called random reinforcement, and encourages persistence, and anyway I am too bloody-minded to give up.