What we have to say … and another first for me …

It was clear to me in the months after Lee, the love of my life, passed away (and so young too) that the profound effect of such a life-changing event was going to seep through into my writing. I had seen its effect in others, in the kind of poetry they wrote, the stories they wrote. Now it’s true to say, as writers, we often like to dwell on the sad and the painful and that’s why I so often suggest the use of pathos, the sad and the funny side by side.

So I guess the idea of missing someone did come into my writing a lot and probably still does, but it’s different now, less raw, more humorous.

Some of you will have read the story that won me the Bath Short Story Award, Learning to Fly, and indeed, as you may have read in my interview, it did take many elements from personal experience. Read the interview and the story here if you haven’t:

LINK

Of course I also made sure, as you’ll read, the story had a message — and one I will repeat here in case anyone reading this needs to hear it. Things do get better. They really honestly, truly, do. So the story itself is a metaphor for coming to terms with grief.

In the same way Rats In The Attic, that won the Sunpenny Press competition some time ago, also dealt with a child coming to terms with his sister’s illness with humour and hope.

When we have lost everything — we always have hope.

Hope is the last thing to die.

A story I also wrote around this time was one that has a darker edge but still ends with hope.

It’s called Rush Hour. It’s in essence how a girl deals with the suicide of her friend, but I like to think it’s a whole lot more than that. I felt, when I returned to work after Lee’s death, that I was trapped in a job and a life I was desperately unhappy with. But at such a difficult time it was hard and perhaps ill-advised to make life-changing decisions. Because we’d worked together, at least in the same place, I had a whole other hurdle to climb. But I always believed, and still very filmy believe, that life is too short to waste a single day of it doing something that not only doesn’t make you happy — but makes you  darn right miserable.

We need to eat,  we need to breathe. We need to pay the bills — so it’s far too idealistic to say walk away. It’s not Hollywood, it’s real life, right? And trust me I know what’s it was like when I once had a brief stint of claiming jobseekers. I hope never to have to do that again! But I hung in there, somehow, clinging to the dream I knew one day would be my escape. And it was.

In the words of a proverb that came of a fortune cookie (and found itself pinned to my notice board once): Success is your best revenge. And now, well  I somehow created the dream job for myself. Sure pennies can be so tight I live on beans on toast (I love beans on toast!) but gradually that is less and less the case and I am so happy. Richness is not measured in pennies, but in quality of life, right?

So, why all this preamble? Let me tell you. I saw that old life as being part of a rat race — I always had this crazy notion I wanted to turn around on a busy street and go the other way. Be the exact opposite to everyone else.

Rush Hour is the story of just that. Choosing to live. And like the girl in this story, she learns from what she saw happen to her friend — life really is short — so take a chance — while you still can.

So that’s my message for this Friday morning.

And why is today another first? Well Rush Hour was selected and TODAY has been published in a literary journal! And being published in such a prestigious place really is a great honour and a first! I hope of many!

Here is the link and you can read Rush Hour on page 65, my bio at the back. Looks like there are some great stories, poems and art pieces in here so there’s my weekend’s reading.

What a year 2013 is.

And the best is yet to come. That my friends, is my motto for life. Wave the banner, print it on the t-shirt. And the best is yet to come …

Cannot wait to see wait to see what 2014 will bring but it promises to be even better.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

 

Read me …

 

 

I have a dream …

… that one day my stories will live in the hearts and souls of millions (but if I change the way one person sees the world I will have succeeded as a writer).

 

{Truth in Fiction Series}

THE THIRD IN A GROUP OF UPCOMING POSTS ABOUT THE INTERPLAY OF FACT AND FICTION IN OUR WRITING. IF YOU FEEL YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE, WOULD LIKE TO OFFER A GUEST POST — PLEASE EMAIL ME WRITER@DEBZHOBBS-WYATT.CO.UK

***

 

I had to write a post today that featured Martin Luther King Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his iconic I Have A Dream speech. Like many of the great and fallen heroes he has and continues to inpire and his words will be heard and spoken many times today I don’t doubt.

It could well have been that instead of my debut novel being the Kennedy one, Colourblind was honoured on this day, but it is a novel I know will be reworked soon. It has to be.

My very first attempt at a novel was my American Indian As the Crow Cries saga and while I don’t anticipate it ever seeing the light of day, the short stories woven into it did spawn a few later short stories that went on to be published. All the stories were originally supposed to represent visions of the way the world would change and all loosely connected with crows, be it simply leitmotifs or names or theme. And the story that was dying to be turned into something more than a short was Colourblind. It was left out of my feeble attempt at a first novel for that reason, but the crow symbolism here was not just a bird or a warning of death but the very real and appalling situation in the USA that came to be known as the Jim Crow era.

This novel has a very important message alongside a mystery that had to be solved and very strong tie-ins to the Civil Rights Movement in the US. I don’t know why I chose to write about it, this little white Essex girl, but then again, it needed to be written, just as Martin Luther King  Jr. needs to be remembered. And to see how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.

I learned a lot writing that novel and I have promised myself that when I finish I Am Wolf I will have a look at how to make this into what it always needed to be, but I was just not a good enough writer. Let’s hope I am now.

Of course I did use the lessons learned in that early novel when I crafted While No One Was Watching, including an African-American protagonist and clearly no story about Kennedy is complete if it does not give mention to the civil rights movement or pay some homage to MLK and in fact having a black President. And I do indeed have those elements woven into the novel.

Let me tell you a very idealistic but magical story about Colourblind and forgive me if I have talked about this before. There is something quite special about Alice — the little girl in this story but I won’t tell you as it will lose the magic of the book when (let’s always be positive) it is published.  But  it has very strong tie-ins to this post and I always visualised a place in the prologue (set in the future) but returned to in the epilogue. I saw a grown up Alice meeting her old teacher and George who plays a very important role in the story. I saw roses of all colours and a waterfall. I had no idea where the place was but I saw it in my head so clearly.

Long after the novel was finished I needed to rework this ending and I found myself on the internet and by some serendipitous wrong click I was staring at the place. It’s real, it’s in Atlanta where the story is set and it’s exactly how I saw it. Some cynics might say I knew this place existed and it isn’t magical at all — but all I can tell you is I had goose bumps the size of Georgia and I knew. I just knew someone was whispering in my ear and that that one day I would succeed with this story. That became and still is my dream. The place is called  … maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Maybe it will spoil the ending.

But I  did promise a friend when the book is published we will go there. For sure. And I have never forgotten that promise. Maybe they’ll even sell the book in the bookstore there!

So what are you dreaming today?

Only you have the power to make those dreams come true and that special person whispering in my ear is still there … so it has to come true, doesn’t it.

Never. Stop. Believing.

When Characters are Teachers …

How do you see your role as a writer?

I think it’s fair to say I see mine as trying to make sense of the world and by doing so offering another perspective. I think that’s why I am so in love with character narrators with really strong voices. I get to act, to be someone else and as a result, while I have my own views of the world, oddly my characters actually teach me theirs.

Of course I start with my views and there may be some facet of human nature, some flaw of personality, even some unfathomable (to me anyway) behaviour I want to explore in a story. So I start out with a character, take Lydia in While No One Was Watching, my African-American psychic. Where did she  come from? In part she came from Molly another character in another novel that I still plan to rework, but how I really met her was in the  original short story where I saw a room, a reporter and a woman sitting holding a child’s locket. What I saw of her first were her big black hands and the silver chain dripping through her fingers. I saw her lean forward in the chair and I heard her say, “It belonged to a little girl. She disappeared the day Kennedy was shot and was never found.” And from that came the short story that got some amazing comments from the tutors on an Arvon course and later morphed into the novel. But what could this psychic, who in that short story I didn’t quite trust, have to teach me?

Well I tell you she taught me all sorts about what it might be like to grow up in Texas; she was sixteen when Kennedy was assassinated. She taught me there is a little town called Hamilton Park that has a large African-American community. She taught me what it was like growing up with the legacy that there was a time when black people couldn’t ride the bus with white people — or if they did, they had to ride at the back. Seems ridiculous and appalling now but it really wasn’t so long ago now, was it?

Now in the short story I had her papa as the first black magician in Texas as I wanted it to be something he was very proud of and a work ethic he tried to instil in his children. But also it allowed me to use one of my favourite lines, that sadly had to be taken out as you’ll see. Because the short story was an exploration of voice and unreliable narration, the reader wasn’t meant to know if  Lydia could be trusted, and there was a comparison with what her papa did. Now this was still used in earlier drafts of the novel where he was still a magician. I liked the whole sleight of hand thing and in fact that still applies to a little girl disappearing while no one was watching. So it had more levels than just a career I chose for him. But our astute cynical reporter, who sees asking a psychic to find a missing child as a desperate last resort, is even more cynical when he knows what job her papa did.

The reporter looks at Lydia and he says, “So your papa was a magician — is that so?”

And she says, “Is so. And real proud he was too.”

And the reporter leans back and nods and he says, “So he  made ’em disappear and you find ’em, right?”

I liked the whole idea of that, but since the character and her dead papa were explored in so much more depth in the novel, an editor at one of the big agents who worked with me for a while asked me, if her papa was so opposed to what she did, ‘necromancing’ and claims talking to the dead is against God, then — would he be a magician?

Good point.  Excellent point in fact. Worth noting lovely writer friends when you make changes or adapt short stories. The editor was right — his job didn’t fit with my new discoveries about each character so I had to rethink it. And trust me it’s not just a case of saying — oh he can be a baker then or a shoe maker. No and so began another history lesson from Lydia Collins that I reckon she was dying to teach me, I was just too blind to see it before.

So how did Lydia teach me more history?

Well let me tell you. I went back and she showed me what it was like to live in Hamilton Park — and yes it is a real place. And I found out that it was a planned town, designated for the African-Americans. There’s a whole book about it as a matter of fact — link at the end to the book and here is another link that might be of interest: http://forum.dallasmetropolis.com/archive/index.php/t-6513.html

We’ve all read about slavery and the Jim Crow era, are aware of the prejudices so I did want to move away from stereotypes and as a white person I also have to be really sensitive to this or someone will say — what right do you have to tell a story that’s not yours? And they might have a point. So great care taken. But I had a great teacher and what Lydia taught me was that first of all she had a very proud papa who was now not the first black magician in Texas but the first person in his family to own his own home — in Hamilton Park. She also showed me how many of these people got good jobs too many out at Love Field, the airport very significant to the Kennedy story. And so her papa came to do the same, working for Braniff Airlines. All the pieces were really falling into place. And while he was very proud, Lydia sat me down and she told me, “Debz, my papa was so proud ’bout the way he got through the ‘selection’, folks sayin’ good things ’bout him so he could get that mortgage. but what he never said was how roundin’ all them black folks up together and makin’ their own town was just the same as makin’ a pen for black sheep. Movin’ us to the edge of the town.”

Now what made it into the book, like the line above, evolved from what I read in real accounts. But it’s a whole part of history I knew nothing about and I am so glad that editor made that suggestion. But even happier Lydia taught me about this.

I by no means mean to cause offence to any African-Americans and I hope her voice is authentic and accepted because she is my favourite character, and yes I know you should love all your children equally, but she taught me so much and I hope she continues to as I would love to work with her again. I dare say she will wake me up some night who knows when or how long from now with another story to tell me! And I’ll be waiting.

So I guess what I’m saying is, you might, as the writer, set out with your own views and statements about the world you want to explore through your writing, but sometimes your characters — well they have whole other ideas.

So a good writer, has to also be a good listener.

And maybe my role isn’t just to force my own views onto my readers, but others’ views and really I guess it is to explore new perspectives, just some might not be mine! It’s like gaining sympathy for a character I started out hating! And there are lots of other characters all waiting in line and I guess it’s who shouts the loudest first that gets my attention.

Maybe all I really am is a vehicle for bringing characters like Lydia to you — so you better listen to her, right Lydia?

Yes, Sir. I’m comin’ soon.

Find me on Amazon

When it comes together …

🙂 🙂 🙂

Just a short post this morning to tell you about my writing yesterday. It’s hard not to have doubts about our own work and that’s how I was feeling about certain aspects of the plot and the voice in my new novel I Am Wolf. It’s strange we put such pressure on ourselves, but I am never satisfied until I am sure it’s as good as I can make it and probably then some.

Writing a novel is not as simple as writing a short story and then making it really long— (simplistic I know!) — it’s an art form in itself and one that takes a lot of work and many drafts to get right. When writers embark on their first novel it is often with naivety and in a way that’s a good thing — because if they knew when they started it might well take 5 years and 15 drafts before it’s possibly good enough to be accepted, would they have done it? (Admittedly this is not the case for all but for many and often it’s the 3rd or 4th novel that is finally picked up.) Now I would have kept on — but many wouldn’t. It’s something you have to do for the long haul. I hear people talking about ‘having a go’ at getting their first novel written for a novel competition and that’s really great but just bear in mind if the writer has not really been published before (in other words might not be quite at the right level yet) and if the draft they submit to the competition is a first draft — be mindful of that fact and don’t’ expect too much. But then again, there are exceptions to every rule and I can only talk from my own experience 🙂 And the last thing I’d want to do is put anyone off! I always have been a positive thinker — but you have to be realistic in your expectations as well of course!

So, anyway, where was I? Oh trying to make this a short post! Yeah the new novel. As I was finishing the switch to first person for all chapters and therefore editing again as I read, I kept having realisations and not just on one or two plot points I worried stretched credibility a little too far, but lots of things. In my search for depth and more sympathy for Amy my protagonist, I added some more back story that showed why she is like she is. And it seemed I had unknowingly added a number of leitmotifs that seemed as if I was foregrounding my new key revelation and yet when I wrote them it wasn’t invented yet! Am I making sense?

It’s this magic that happens somewhere as you write and yesterday those moments of clarification you really need for the big structural edit, were coming thick and fast! I have  lots of notes stapled together next to me and it’s only really near the end where the changes will come into full play.

I love it when it happens this way and I can’t wait to get cracking.

Of course to return to my first point about lots of drafts and lots of work — I would never have got to this point had I not gone through the many other drafts. Like I said — the long haul.

And don’t you just love it. Bring it on.

My aim now is to have a version ready for submission in September before the first novel is out.

 

It’s coming … #JFK50 #WhileNoOneWasWatching

When ideas come …

Sometimes they fall like Autumn leaves to make a rich carpet around you. Like confetti tumbling out of the sunshine.

Sometimes they burrow with the ferocity of a squirrel stashing nuts — you need to work to tease them out.

Sometimes they bathe you like waves washing over you — and sometimes they drown you, obsess you, drag you to the surface gasping for air.

But then they come, they come.

And you need to hold onto them and breathe life through them.

That is the job of the writer.

Have a great weekend everyone! Enjoy the sunshine 🙂

Sweet Land of Liberty …

A US flavour for the 4th of July!

I am very much an all or nothing kind of person — I mean if I love it I don’t just love it — I’m obsessed with it! And there are many US things in that list — beginning of course with Mr Manilow! (There she goes again!)

I first visited California at the tender age of 9. Having grown up hugely influenced by US TV shows and films and a dad who worked for Disney, also a film buff who’d travelled around the states extensively, I very much followed in his footsteps — literally! As you’ll see later.

I remember that amazing trip to California in 1978 and I recall how hard it was to adjust after I came home. This whole other exciting place was happening the other side of the world and I wanted to be a part of it. It took me ages to change my watch back to UK time 😦 It’s true of course on holiday we see a different side, there’s money to burn, you eat out, visit theme parks (and they can do them better than us for sure) so it’s not hard to see why I felt that way.

It was however little over a decade before I went back and that time it was to see Barry Manilow — a 2 week trip with the fan club and before you laugh — just remember this is one of the best memories I have — truly. You wouldn’t want to tread on that now, would you?  What a trip and I remember wondering why I’d left it so long to go back. We hired a super stretch limo twice, both times driving to Bel Air where Mr Manilow then presided — and I recall opening a bottle of champers out of the sun roof when Barry’s neighbour, Ringo Starr saluted our decadence and spoke to us! I guess I was being teased by a celebrity life style and one I have to say I don’t actually crave — I love my simple little life —  but it was fun never the less. Maybe the 20-year-old me craved it — a little!

Because I have some great friends in the US — friends my dad met all those years ago when he worked for Disney and travelled around, I went back often after that and stayed with my lovely friend Jan. In fact I am planning a trip to see her next March when I will have a book launch out there too!

While I don’t dream of a house in LA so much now, there is still part of me that does hold onto that dream  (now it’s a second home I crave not a forever home) and it’s now connected with seeing my novel made into a movie — why not? It’s good to dream once in a while.

When I said how I followed in my dad’s footsteps (literally) I meant it because a few years ago, after a break-up and seeking direction in my life, I spent a few months out there. I was based in the San Fernando Valley in Sherman Oaks with Jan but travelled all over the county on the Greyhound bus. This is something my dad did in the 70s and I almost followed the same route. In fact he helped me plan it and since they still did the 5-day Ameripass like Dad had bought all those years before — I hopped on and off and travelled all over. I read a book before I went about a woman’s experience on the Greyhound and I recall how she said (paraphrased) if you’ve ever woken up on a bus, hours spent crammed into a small space, legs and everything hurt and then you look out of the window and watch the sun rise over the Nevada desert — you discover there is a fine line between heaven and hell.  And I felt that exactly. What a trip!

The states is a HUGE place and there is so much variation between states — so much beauty! It really is America the Beautiful for its mountain ranges, forests, lakes, truly breathtaking landscapes as well as the cities and the US we see depicted on film. And yes there are great riches and great poverty side by side but then again, it’s like that most places. It has so much to offer and that trip took me from New York to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, Chicago, St Louis, Texas, Memphis … in fact too many places to list here to possibly to justice to the magnitude of that trip and the wonderful people I met along the way. I have been bowled over the generosity and kindness of just about everyone I met. I get rather angry when people who’ve never been or have been to one part, say derogatory things — plain narrow-mindedness I guess.

After that trip I was happy to come home but needless to say I missed the place and tried to go back every year after that. In fact after Lee died Jan insisted she pay for me to go to be close to her. I think it’s the only time I went when I didn’t have the usual excitement and I remember crying behind Lee’s sunglasses (his favourite designer ones I later lost on the trip!) on the plane because I always hoped the next time I went he’d have been with me. He was crazy about films and had the best home cinema and knew every director and everything in fact there was to know about films. I promised him a trip to Hollywood. I guess he was there with me — in fact I’m sure while I was sleeping it was him who took back his sunglasses — somewhere in the clouds.

Anyhow that was a trip that was just about hanging out — a change of scenery after 10 weeks at a bedside and 6 weeks grieving at Lee’s parents’ house. I didn’t know if I wanted to go — but I am so glad I did. So I guess the US has seen me at my best and at my saddest. And thanks to Jan I feel I have another family over there. Can’t wait to go back.

So why am I telling you all of this — apart from it being Independence Day — well because the US has also had a great influence on my writing and my reading. While many of my short stories have been based here in the UK, certainly all my novels (and I have written 5!) have been set in the US. I don’t really know why, it just feels like home.

So I am thrilled that While No One Was Watching, my début, has such a US flavour — you can’t get a whole lot more USA than John F Kennedy. I have been following various Twitter sites as you may know that are recounting on this day 50 years ago as we edge closer to the 50th anniversary of the assassination and the release of my novel. I wasn’t born when Kennedy was assassinated but it is still a moment that silenced the world then and leaves its echoes still. Why it touched me I don’t quite know but I like to think a part of me is American. When I was regressed for a past life (research for a future novel) I was probably many things but I was (although it sounds like a cliché) a native American. Real or not, cliché or not,I like to think it’s true.

It explains a lot. Including my obsession with Barry Manilow and Jon Bon Jovi and why there’s a stars and stripes bandanna in my sock drawer!

I think  will leave it there — suffice it to say HAPPY 4th of JULY to my US friends (that includes my followers!) and everyone else … enjoy the fireworks wherever you are!

My hero … (no groaning!)

LA Land of Dreams …

Come on over and Like my Author page on Facebook if you haven’t to follow the countdown to my novel and lots of facts about Kennedy! https://www.facebook.com/DebzHobbsWyattAuthor

And follow me on Twitter too for other insights! @DebzHobbsWyatt

The joy of writing … the God Being of Fictional Worlds?

Why do you write?

Now that’s the question and for me the answer is simple — because I can not NOT write. I have to do it. I have to and I always have and I think I always will.

Is is that way for you?

As a kid I spend hours either pored over a book reading or pored over a notebook writing, one or the other and I also loved and still love TV and movies. It’s like I spend most of my life in another reality, and a good deal of that is a reality of my own creation, where I get to play God! Oh the power…. wrings hands, practises mirthless laugh …  Maybe there’s some complex psychology going on there. In a world where much of our destiny is out of our hands and where we have only limited control, in the fictional, anything is possible — right? I have all the control.

*Pause for evil laugh*

Or do I? Do I really have control? Do any of us?

What is this force that comes in and makes phones ring at the end of scenes, or strangers appear in crowded cafés with some garbled message. Or the unexpected death of a key character? This is what happens to me as I write, as if something within (the reader who has read enough stories to know what’s needed even if I don’t know I know it) throws the story off in another direction, like a rocket that thinks its spinning in a centripetal loop starts spiralling off in a whole other direction.  And I have to say almost without exception because the story needed it. So what often appears random might well be at the mercy of my unconscious mind — which is a scary, but at the same time, exciting thought. Who is really in control? Who controls the sub or un –  conscious me?

Is there a fictional God or ‘God being’ in fictional worlds too? One that makes sure the surprises keep coming to keep not only the reader on their toes but it seems the writer too. If it surprises me, then it sure to surprise the reader.

I love these moments of magical intervention when the fictional God speaks. Do you have those?

This weekend I have been reading lots, so by the time I go to Hay on Friday I will have read 4 of the 5 Commonwealth Short-listed books  (couldn’t get the 5th in time — bet that wins! Sod’s Law!) and  the short stories that won the regions will be on the Granta website a story a day from today kicking off with Europe and Canada regional winner Eliza Robertson, so I really want to read them all, and especially Eliza’s who mine and one other story were up against for the title!!! This is the link GRANTA

And as I’ve been reading I have all sorts of new ideas for novels (nothing like the ones I’ve been reading by the way) swimming in my head. I think the more we read and the more we write, the more creative we become. I love it. I did once follow this idea of keeping a notebook by the bed for the rare times I dream great opening lines or even whole ideas. I think about when Barry Manilow says he wrote his iconic ‘One Voice’ song in a dream. Well, when I have managed to find the pen in my half awake state and write something — that at the time is the best thing I ever wrote and sure to be my break out novel, it turned out to be nothing more than illegible, up the sides of the paper nonsense in the light of day. Ah well. It seemed good at the time. Maybe this is when the ‘God Being’ of fiction speaks to me, like that possessed writing thing, channelling some spirit I have seen psychics do. But it doesn’t work well for me. In my fictional life I am not a channeller when asleep. But when I’m awake them all sorts speak to me!

I like to think there is some force that keeps me having ideas and keeps we writing them (when awake!) and keeps me learning how to do it better. And if there is a God Being of Fiction then I quite like that. But it also means we don’t really control anything! Do we?

Ah well …

Today I will be continuing with the edits  of While No One Was Watching and then copy-editing another book for the publisher I work for … not what some might be doing on a wet bank holiday. But I’m as happy as a pig in … well you know.

Have a great day everyone and remember to send me something for Fiction Clinic if you want to. Nothing yet …

Where no one can hurt me …

Sometimes I think I live in a bubble.

I surround myself in a comfort blanket of unreality where death is only imagined and pain is a lesson.

Where the fight is a journey, a fence hurdled, a mountain climbed.

And victory is the sweet overcoming of my own creation.

And I draw the blanket around myself as I create, pulling in reality for validity and credibility — but it can’t harm.

The suffering, though imagined, does draw from truths, and the lessons of the work  validated in changed thinking.

But in that bubble I feel safe.

I am safe.

Aren’t I?

I stand in my bubble with my hands pressed to a film — a surface so fine it’s already gone.

And yet it connects to everything. And nothing.

Yesterday another senseless act of violence in London.

Today?

Tomorrow?

I sip from a glass that’s full, see through the rainbow of a bubble.

I know one day I will use what I saw yesterday to tell another story, another face, another name, but the same.

I will weave meaning from senseless. It’s how I survive. It’s what I do. A President shot on a crowded Dallas street.

History reshaped by a writer of untruths and truths — side by side.

But not today.

Today I watch.

Today I stand in my bubble and believe we are all safe.

 

 

Roll silent credits

Constructing the fictional reality …

How do you see yourself? Someone who creates other worlds or who reveals things about the one you’re in?

What is the job of the writer … probably both? Right?

 

I asked myself this question when I was writing the first short story for my MA. I had written a short story called Living By Numbers that later went on to be published in a collection in the US as it happens. The premise of the story was very simple. A girl is sat next to her mother, trapped in a car she has driven into a barrier. Her mother might be dead. But the girl has a serious aversion to odd numbers and especially odd multiples of odd numbers. What does this mean in real terms? She can’t press 999 or I guess 911 is equally applicable. Why? Because she thinks then the world will end … but maybe it already has?

It’s one of those stories where everything happens inside the mind of the narrator over a short space of time. Where we see how her illness progressed, how her father leaving that she blames herself on being because of her messy bedroom, develops this psychosis almost that keeping everything in order, and clean and numbered keeps her safe. She creates rules to live by. But to save her mother she now has to break those down.

This story was a challenge to my thinking about what makes a fictional reality or ‘unreality’ and most rules and ideas about creating the fictional universe come from the depths of Sci Fi which is apt after the interview with Daniel yesterday. If you didn’t real it — I urge you to.

The most misinterpreted idea that we write what we know comes to mind as well — where would we be if that was ‘literally’ the case? It’s fun creating these alternative worlds and what we really mean by the expression is — draw upon what we know of our own world and our own lives as human beings, and use those elements to create a believable fictional reality. Or that’s how I see it. We might not know what it feels like to be a green alien with two heads (well most of us anyway! He he …) but  if our alien is lost and missing home (think ET) we will empathise because as humans we can only express ourselves using human emotion. And why wouldn’t aliens, or animals, even not go through the same emotions?

The thing about the girl in the Living By Numbers story is she isn’t the alien with two heads — or is she? Maybe that is exactly who she is initially to the reader.

At first the reader will be annoyed at her — it’s simple — just press 999. Right? And I wanted the reader to think that. But pretty soon the intention is for the reader to see how hard an act that is. In the same way the alien with the evil stares (on both faces!) and the laser gun is really only missing home.

So while in this case I was taking ‘reality’ rather than basing the story in a fictional world light years from our own, I was still using the same ideas as that — i.e. creating an alternative universe where odd numbers mean danger.

What I learned in my research for the piece was that what’s fundamental to creating fictional worlds in Sci Fi is in establishing the rules. In fact there are very distinct rules for example about using time travel (a subject that fascinates me endlessly I have to say!) — and these rules need to be followed for credibility. Really. There are books on the subject like this one — Time Travel: A Writer’s Guide to the Real Science of  Plausible Time Travel. LINK  Not sure which book it was but I know Audrey Niffenegger used something like this when she wrote Time Traveler’s Wife (love that book!)

And there are certainly rules for Sci Fi worlds — you need only Google that as I just did and you’ll see these. Take this first Blog I came across for example about ‘word building’  BLOG

Now you might think my story or some of your stories are not Sci Fi and therefore this isn’t applicable? Well maybe not the specifics but world building — yes. Of course it is. And what is fundamental to all of these is ‘establishing the rules’ and I scrolled down as saw the same thing in this Blog and interestingly a comparison with many genres of writing as well so it fits with what I’m talking about.

Take our OCD character whose life is governed by numbers. How she sees the world may be very different from how we do. But this is the same world so what’s changed?

The girl’s perception of it — right? It’s the rules she lives by. So the real purpose of the story and why I wrote it, was to give insight. To show that what seems ridiculous in the cold light of day, making a call that could save her mother’s life, is the most difficult thing in the world for Anna. But once I allowed the reader to invade her back story and see why this happened and how she created the rules to keep safe, my hope is an increasing sympathy and understanding of what in essence is another world.

So the rules are key to creating any fictional reality — regardless of genre. And these rules are anything from the rain falling upwards on the planet Zog to a girl who ‘doesn’t do odd numbers or multiples of odd numbers and certainly not odd multiples of odd numbers’ as I say in the story.

Create the rules and the world and the readers are with you — but be consistent, don’t confuse them. As readers we can be made to believe anything so long as it’s well written, well constructed and created in a way that has credibility.

So how does my story end? Well it can only end one way. The climax has to be the decision to call or not to call. And for the sake of being satisfactory there has to be a moment when she conquers her fears for the sake of the story. It has to feel like the insights we, as readers, gain from the story about the narrator, put us right with her in the end, rooting for her and knowing, really knowing what this means to press these numbers. We will have changed our thinking about her by understanding her world. The question that remains however, is is she too late?

I will (unusually for me!) leave you with the opening of that story and a link to the book but it is only available in the US.

Have a great writing day everyone as you build those worlds and then the fun part of the writer’s job is …

What?

Creating chaos and conflict within them … right. And there, no matter what the genre, lays the real essence of story.

 

Living By Numbers

I don’t do odd numbers, numbers in multiples of odd numbers and definitely not odd numbers in multiples of odd numbers.

All I have to do is press three numbers. But I can’t.  

Mum is dying.

 

This is what happens when The System breaks down. Everything  needs order otherwise we plummet into a state called chaos (the second law of thermodynamics.) Chaos is what happens if you step on the cracks in the pavement; if you turn around in a clockwise direction without spinning back the other way. And it’s what happens if you press three odd numbers on a push button phone.

“Damn it!” I rattle the door, sleeve pulled over fingers. STUCK. I press my shoulder against it. PUSH. PUSH HARDER. No budge. I sit back, look down at my hands, scrutinise the skin; no mark, no blemish. YET TAINTED. The belt still pins me against the seat, straps me to the moment while the word still falls into chaos. HURTS. It presses against my shoulder. I want to reach down and unbuckle it I can’t touch. DIRTY.

Beside me Mum is slumped forwards. Her hair falls across her cheek. Red, matted. The window is broken, the rain seeps in, COLD, RELENTLESS. There’s a TV advert playing in my head, the one where the driver is pushed right through the windscreen. Splashes of red, windscreen pizza. She should have been wearing a seat belt. She should have moved by now. SHOULD HAVE.

I look down at my lap where the phone sits like a silent reminder.   

 “It’s about choices, Anna” Dad’s voice in my head like a conscience “Choose,” he says, “Do it Anna, make the call. BUT – what about the odd numbers?

Dad is right, it is about choice. Mum chose Dad. Dad chose to leave. I choose to follow The System.

“Do the right thing, Anna,” Dad says. I close my eyes. I want him to understand that some things stop being a choice. That I am doing the right thing.

 

I press my fingers to the window and at first I not seeing the blood splattered there. Now it coats my fingertips. DIRTY. I rub them frantically across my jeans leaving a trail. Fingertips burn. NO USE.  CONTAMINATED.

I placate myself by counting the dots on the window. It’s like a flick painting; the kind of thing I used to do with Mum. I was just a kid. Of course, Mum still thinks I am a kid. But at seventeen, there are many things I can do that prove I’m not.  If I want to.

I control my own life. I control it better than Mum does.

 “Damn it Mum, move will you.”

 

I close my eyes and count the things that float in the blackness. Globular masses that live behind closed eyes. I count to keep order. I count to restore the equilibrium. I count because it is the second part of The System. The part that says the world is protected by perfect numbers, straight lines and symmetry. Even my name has symmetry.

“It’s just bad luck,” I hear Dad say in my head. I tell him I don’t believe in luck. Luck means something that happens beyond our control. Makes us all victims of random circumstance, like it raining today, like driving too fast, like skidding off the road.

There is a reason for everything.  

I look for a reason why it’s Mum’s blood sprayed across the glass and not mine.  Why she wasn’t wearing her seat belt when she usually does. And  why we were fighting.

“Wake up, Mum.”

She always knows best. Or she thinks she does. It’s not the same thing. When I was seven she tried to tell me it wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t the reason Dad left. She sends me to a psychologist. He also pretends to know best.

“Tell me how you felt when your Dad left, Anna?” They’ve been asking me that for years. How do they think I bloody felt?

“I didn’t feel anything,” I said.

I look at the phone, now it’s a silent intruder. The word still spins into chaos. Press three numbers. JUST DO IT.

“Don’t worry Mum,” I say. “Someone will come.”

 

I rattle the door. I do it eight times. It’s raining harder now and where it hits the glass its forms pink smears on the windscreen. I want to wipe it clean. I look out at the road it will be dark soon. It was dark at 4.08 yesterday. There no lights on this section of road. DARK. My eyes wander to the line of conifers leading into the forest. I concentrate on one of them, I see it bend over in the wind. I wait for it to do it again. I count. One, two, three…SAFE. Order keeps you safe.

“Make it even,” I whisper. I hear my pulse in my head like the march of hollow footsteps. I stare at the trees and ask for a sign. I want to look away.

 I stop watching when the tree has bent over eight times like a humble servant bending for me. I nod, give gratitude when it complies. Then I press my eyes shut and seal the deal. Eight is safe. SAFE.

The world stopped being safe on a Wednesday.  The day Dad left. He left because I forgot to tidy my bedroom. When I think about it he was angry about everything. When he left it was the first time I realised a person could disappear gradually, the way ink fades on the page…

© Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, published in Rattlesnake Valley Sampler; An Anthology of Regional Writing 

You might ask why I am in a collection by regional writers from Wisconsin — in fact I have a 911 story in there too called Stepping Into Silence.  I once had this mad idea to twin with a writing group from another Bangor. Bangor in Maine didn’t have one (odd I know, home of Stephen King!) so we found La Crosse in Wisconsin close to another Bangor. The collection welcomed subs from their writers but by association Bangor Writing Group Wales were also invited and the rest as they say is history. I am still in touch with the group as it happens and some have made it into Bridge House books. In fact it was when they critted While No One Was Watching the short story, they said they thought it should be a novel. So I have to thank them for planting that seed!

Anyway … really going now. Honest.

 

Buy Me

Between the lines …

Welcome to another exciting week 🙂 What will it bring?

Lots of smiles we hope!

I want to be brief (ish) this morning as I am keen to plunge head first into the climactic last chapters of  I Am Wolf  which once again is threatening to be more than 100K, probably closer to 115K and will need some pruning with the second big edit. Aim = 90K. But that’s how it should be. Get it down and then shape it into sharpness.

One of the things lately that I seem to be saying to writers a lot is SHOW don’t TELL. Yes it has had many appearances on this page and it seems to the thing that needs the most explaining. I don’t plan to revisit the nuts and bolts with this post, the nitty-gritty of narrative showing rather than telling, but more in how we need to show through what’s not said. And the word is of course SUBTEXT.

There are a few definitions of subtext. A common one is ‘the underlying or implicit meaning of a literary work’. This can be deep and if writers are trying to be too clever with subtle symbolism and almost imperceptible leitmotifs  (recurring themes) these might be lost. It’s all about balance. How learned are you and how hard do you want your reader to work?

I usually describe subtext as being what’s not said (as in not overtly stated anyway); it requires the reader to look for the clues. And again body language will come into this.  Think of it as what happens in the gap between what’s known and what’s not known. The clues will be there and that’s down to the skill of the writer.

I would also say there is the subtext in what a character is saying and what he is doing, there may be discrepancies that are more to do with the characterisation, and there will be the deeper underlying subtext that relates to the theme of the piece as a whole, the underlying heart beat. But of course in essence these would be the same — what drives or motivates a  character’s actions will be a form of statement of theme — even if whispered so quietly it’s a soft hint.

What lurks between the lines of your current work in progress? Or indeed the book you’re currently reading?

Think layers — they need to be there to give meaning to your writing. And they probably are there, even if you don’t think they are — they come from the subconscious. Spooky … and thinking of spooky … see the cover below …

 

In The Spotlight tomorrow the lovely author Patsy Collins

Have a wonderful week everyone!

For Catherine who mentioned how much she liked this BHP cover. Me too! This is another one by my talented brother 🙂 Justin Wyatt