The Writing Process: The Relationship between notebooks and publications.

 

“Writers live life twice – once when they live it and once when they write it.”

Anaïs Nin.

 

My friendship with literary archivist  Dr. Donna Maynard has always been interesting and continues to be fruitful. She was excited when she saw the hundreds of notebooks on the shelves in my little writing room, which go back through my fifty years as a working novelist. As she read through them  she realised that they mapped the 20 or so novels and the short stories and poetry which have been my professional preoccupation through that time..

She came to a personal conclusion that these notebooks and the books themselves formed a very interesting literary archive. Since then she has begun to map the relationships between the notebooks and the books, cross-referencing them in a way which somehow reflects the creative process of writing novels. In essence this relationship between the notebooks and the novels would be an essential part of any emerging archive.

 So, part of this process has been our discussion about the individual novels and my own stories of the process whereby they came about. I have found  myself telling her about the underlying story of each novel in the creation of each novel, each story and each poem -  the stories as it were of the uniqur creative process.

 It has now emerged that an essential part of this process has been my self-imposed  task of writing on my blog an essay documenting the story of the creation of each of the novels and some of the short stories and poems. These essays will be published week by week on my blog/website and will eventually be collected together as part of the archive and possibly make a book in themselves.

This may take a year of so but it will be interesting and the collaboration with Donna is very inspiring.

 So far I have documented the stories of of the creation of five of the novels on my blog: Theft, The Real Life Of Studs McGuire, Lizza, French Leave. and I am now focusing on Under a Brighter Sky.

The Process:

 We began by considering my first published work – Theft, a children’s novel from 1972, published by Corgi Transworld (I wrote a story about this novel here on the blog in an essay entitled ‘The 50 Year Novel.’) 

Our consideration of this  children’s novel was followed by another so-called young adult novel, The Real Life Of Studs McGuire published by Hodder and Stoughton.  Writing the essay about this book focused my emerging understanding  of the nature of friendship between boys as I observed the boys in my classes and my own son growing and changing. 

Then we focused on Lizza, my first young adult novel, published in 1987 by Hodder Stoughton, later transformed to Headline.  At the time it was seen as  my "breakthrough” novel, Lizza. And I thought then - I think now  that there is little or no difference between young adult and an adult novel.

 Anyway, Donna and I examined both editions: of Lizza - the hardback and the paperback. First we looked with new eyes at the hardback cover - illustrated by Steve Braund – and admired it for its sensitivity and its own visual storytelling arc. Then we compared this cover with the cover of the paperback which, as you can see, is much sharper and more modern, but still very appealing and charming in its own way.

 Although I remember the novel very well I had almost forgotten the details of the covers. Now a frisson of shock ripples through me as both of these images began to remind me of myself at the particular time of writing.  On the hardback cover the biographical blurb reminds me of myself at this time in 1987: a younger self that has  faded deep into the background of my life which in turn has faded into the background of in my older life. See again here - in the words of my first great editor, Anne Williams -  what it says about this young, aspiring writer :  #

"Wendy Robertson is senior lecturer in education at Sunderland Polytechnic. She has been writing since she was 16, but because of a full-time career much of the writing remains unpublished. In 1973 her first novel Theft was published in paperback k by Corgi Transworld and for several years she also wrote a weekly article on a variety of subjects for the Northern Echo and she has published and she has had several stories published in magazines.

Wendy Robertson lives in a Victorian house at the centre of Bishop Auckland, County Durham, which he loves because yours is obsessively interested in what she calls “the past in the present. What is reality and what is fantasy can never be disengaged’ she writes. “In my writing I take this a stage further placing my magic imagination at the service of the basic story which may be a well-rehearsed refrain.” She is married with two grown-up children a boy and girl."

 

Well , dear reader, that was 40 years ago and was very true of my life at the time, which was a combination of a very committed family life and a very intense working life, where my long-term lifetime commitment to writing had to be squashed in around college vacations, transporting children to their schools, visiting museums and art galleries for my interest and for their education.  

And so with the publication of Lizza by this major new publisher Headline,  I was given permission to acknowledge that I was indeed a writer and this allowed me at last to place the writing of stories to its proper place at the centre of my life  This meant tailing off my work in higher education, where I had learnt a lot and which I had really enjoyed. In reality I still sustained my commitment to education in that I transferred it to running workshops and a pattern of mentoring new writers through many years. I wrote about that here:

 http://lifetwicetasted.blogspot.com/search?q=memoir

 

I could have written or expressed those same feelings this year and all the years since the publication of Lizza.  You will find similar sentiments expressed throughout my blog posts here on Life Twice Tasted.

 But always at the entre of my life were my long novels, which I went on to complete just about one every year for the next couple of decades. I became a novelist.

One interesting thing about this 1987 blurb - forgotten by me since then – are my quoted comments on the cover.. 

“What is reality and what is fantasy can never be disengaged’ and “In my writing I take this a stage further placing my magic imagination at the service of the basic story which may be a well-rehearsed refrain.”

I had forgotten that I had made this declaration on the cover of Lizza, but now must say that I have continued to write and work from these principles in all the decades since. Evidence for this commitment still exists in many of my posts here on Life Twice Tasted. I have also preached these principles in many of my writing workshops.  See: http:/http://lifetwicetasted.blogspot.com/search?q=memoir

 Already we are finding and noting cross references between the notebooks and the books themselves. This is an exciting process. The next novel we are focusing on is Under a Brighter Sky and the writing of this - as with all the novels to come - has its own story. 

If you are interested you may read this essay next on the blog.

 

 

 

LIVING LIFE TWICE - LOVING FRANCE AND WRITING FRENCH LEAVE

 Growing up with France in the head.

LOVING FRANCE AND WRITING FRENCH LEAVE :

As a child born during World War II and growing up in the years after I was very much aware of the existence of France and Germany.  As an early reader I read newspapers, in imitation of my father Billy, whose chosen paper was the News Chronicle. I found it easy to admire the brave French partisans who defended their country from their powerful occupiers. In the years after the end of the war as well as relishing of the victory, I read eagerly the tales of the liberation of France. Even as quite small a child I felt lucky that Hitler didn’t get to walk down Whitehall as he strode down the Champs-Élysées, swastikas flying.

My sense of the existence of France and Germany took a richer and more informed shape when I finally went to the grammar school at the age of 11. The so-called Eleven Plus was a crude if effective generic IQ test across the whole population which carried with it the reward of a well-resourced education.

So, despite being the poorest of the poor, and living in a two-bedroomed house complete with privy in a narrow street in a mining town in the North East,  three of the four children in this family passed the eleven plus for the grammar school. The fourth – my sweet brother Tom, had been in hospital in the crucial year before and didn’t sit the test.

So, at the age of eleven I entered the much revered grammar wearing the basic uniform bought on tick from Doggart’s store. In this school the teachers wore caps and gowns for assembly and the curriculum was geared towards white collar jobs and the university.

I knew I had entered a new world when – in the first week - I met Mr Phorson, head of French, who addressed my class only in French from the moment we entered the classroom. I was to discover later that this was called the Phorson Method. Interestingly this Method was experienced in the next generation by my daughter Debora at her school, at the hands of her teacher Mrs Snow (Madame la Neige!) who had had been a student of Mr Phorson when she was at Durham University. By then he was a respected professor in the  French at the University. A footnote here might be that Debora  now lives in France and writes lyrically about her life there. (See www.lickedspoon.com )

Through  Mr Phorson’s meticulous teaching,  by the time I was 18 I was reading in French the works of Guy de Maupassant and Honoré de Balzac and the poetry of Verlaine and Rimbaud. But truly there is balance in all things.  A couple of years after meeting Mr Phorson  I also fell into the hands of Mr Thompson, head of German,  and eventually was reading Heinrich Heine and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in German. At times I was bemused to think that a country with such fine and sensitive literature as Germany could fall into the trap of Nazi ideology

Anyway, here was I in my shabby uniform, walking to and to the grammar from my Little Street house, becoming a serious European while many around me expressed their distaste for Germans: the boys playing fight games labelled German’s ‘n English, or Japs ‘n English with pretend guns, the girls turning up their nose when I practised quoting Goethe.

However that feeling was mitigated for me as I absorbed the tenderness of Heinrich Heine and shared the pain of a German soldier in as he froze  on the Russian front in Heinrich Heine’s poem Der Viele Viele Schnee.

And then there was a salutary experience in the 1950s when my German teacher Mr Thompson introduced the class to a visiting German teacher from Dresden who had experienced the wipe-out bombing in that beautiful city by Allied forces towards the end of the war.

Anyway, this growing access to the language and literature of both France and Germany served me, you might say, as an early lesson about the complex nature of my European identity.

By the time my third young adult novel French Leave was published, (still at that time Hodder and Stoughton – not yet Headline…) in 1988 my son and daughter were 22 and 24 respectively. You might say their childhood was my very long practical study in the identity and world-view of both boys and girls.

So it was a pleasure writing more closely in French Leave about a friendship between two boys -Joe and his gypsy friend Skemmer as well as well as Joe’s grandfather, who was part of their adventure. Never having had known either of my grandfathers – or only having  met them in my imagination – it was great fun that as well as exploring the relationship between Joe and Skemmer in that story I enjoyed inventing the relationship between Joe and his grandfather who had experienced service in the Second World War.

When I wrote French Leave I had only been to France once   when husband and I crossed the channel and wandered around Normandy in our blue Jaguar* with our friends Bob and Lil. It was a deep pleasure for me to hear French as she is spoken and observe the norms and practices of everyday life we explored the small towns. There were so many non-textbook lessons now to learn here – not least one about food.

One outstanding memory was stopping in a small village in the mid-afternoon hoping we could find some lunch. We stopped to get petrol in a garage and then walked in to a workman’s café next door. The place smelled of food and spice and on its  long tables lay the detritus of finished meal and empty wine bottles without their screw tops.

The owner caught sight of us, ducked his head and said he was desolate that there was no food left. At least I thought that was what he said. Then he shook his head, open his arms wide and gestured for us to sit down at the end of the large central table.

He only took a minute to clear the table of the empty bottles and plates. ‘Madame!’ He called across  to the e woman who was stacking the dishes at a long open hatch.

In no time glasses and full bottles of wine were placed before us and in twenty minutes Madame was bustling across with a tray on each arm, loaded with a large omelette. Delicious.

(* See also my poem Blue Jaguar on p44 in my collection With Such Caution)

Since then I have enjoyed many such welcomes in many parts of France right down as far as the Languedoc in the fae South West which, like my own north-east England, has its own language which refuses to be put down.

For you! A taste of French Leave.

From Page 31

(Joe has been chasing around trying to get the paperwork right for his grandfather to travel to France.)

Skemmer stood up. “And the woman said it might take ages to come, like?”

“Yes”

Skemmer glanced around the garage, which was deserted. Old Pollard must’ve gone out for his dinner. Skemmer pulled Joe into to the little corner office. On the cluttered desk was a white telephone smeared almost black with grease. The phone number was stuck on the front with a brown cracking Sellotape. He rang Directory Enquiries and got a number, which he proceeded to dial. When somebody answered the phone he started to speak.

It dawned on Joe that  Skemmer was pretending to be him.

“… It’s my grandad, like. He was in the war. D-Day. You know… Whether you’re in Ely shut his number… What… Dying like… Only a few weeks to go. He wants the see the place where he… Yeah, yeah! Anything you could do to hurry it up… Why thanks like. That’s really good.” Then he gave the details, the addresses and all.

As Skemmer slammed down the phone Joe noticed how black his nails were. right down to the cuticles: how black the oil was in the very pores of the skin.

‘I don’t know whether he was she was just giving me the mouth, but she says she’ll watch out for it. Give it some kind of priority. Said she wasn’t allowed to but…”

Joe was mad that Skemmer knew exactly what to do. But he was curious as well. How could somebody like Skemmer do all this?  

…

Cover Copy of 1988 edition of French Leave

“17-year-old Joe shares a close friendship with his grandfather, Bob, and when the old man suggests a trip to France the scene of his wartime experiences, Joe eager to go to. They travel in Bob’s old banger, gaily painted by Joe’s gypsy mate, Skemmer, who accompanies them. There the confident and enterprising Skemmer is an odd companion for Joe, whose shyness and lack of direction a stumbling block for this, his first trip to the continent and his encounter with a friendly outgoing American girl. A little rivalry, memories of truck tragic past and a real present-day crisis also to help you learn more about himself, to establish his first relationship with a girl, and come to terms with his uneasy family situation.

Publisher’s Biography on the cover of French Leave: “ ‘Wendy Robertson has written to other novels for teenagers Lizza, and The Real Life Of Studs Mcguire. Of that novel the review magazine Growing Point has written: ‘The Real Life Of Studs McGuire states fair and square in an urban dilemma in an up-to-date setting and through strongly contemporary characters… The action is swift and exciting enough to carry the message to those who read itI

I like to think that the same may be said of French Leave. Wx

I like to think that the same may be said of French Leave. Wx

 

Amazingly it seems that copies of French Leave is still available through the magic of the Internet - albeit without its wonderful cover. If you are interested, you can find it here: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1363697073&clickid=RHq3yCxkbxyNUrI3HI1nmWcDUkDR5LzZNRmoWs0&cm_mmc=aff-_-ir-_-66692-_-77416&ref=imprad66692&afn_sr=impact 

Afterthought.  In combing through my shelves for this new 'Tasting Life Twice' Project I have come across two versions of the French language edition of French Leave, so thought I you might like to see the covers.

Perhaps it's also worth noting here in this essay that two of my later novels – Writing at the Maison Bleue and An Englishwoman in France also take place in this France that still sits in my head ... Wx

A Present Day Encounter with Susanah in Riches of the Earth - my First adult novel.

 

By 1990, I had worked for more than a decade in teacher education at
Sunderland (then a Polytechnic, now a University), having thrown myself into the fascinating but very hard work of educating teachers and focusing on the inner and outer lives of children. I loved the job. Always the idealist, I was very committed of the thrilling process of encouraging new teachers in the practice of child-centred education.

 This principled process involved creating a classroom ethos where children had the time and space to engage in the world of school by interacting through language and creativity which allowed their unique identities to evolve in the universe of the classroom. Learning to read and write and to handle knowledge and information was integral to this process. In doing so the individual child would make progress within the primary curriculum.

 In those days I was critical of the highly centralised French and German education systems where I learned, the educational progress of every child is monitored, noted, and reported to the central authority. And in primary schools across each country on any given day pupils would be going through the same routines of the curriculum.

 A free spirit myself, for me in those days, markers for success for the children should be measured through the development of talking, reading and writing skills which fostered the personal confidence that should emerge through their experience in the classroom,

 In the field of mathematics, for instance. success was measured as the individual child develops problem solving strategies and skills, using observation and the use of evidence.

 In those idealistic days monitoring a child’s educational achievements was not dependent on centrally set exams and boxes being ticked so the child could be judged.. The idea then was that, with the help of a teacher in a creative classroom, each child should experience avenues to fulfil her or his own unique potential.

 But things have changed now. Today the practice of education is very different. What counts as education in these days is the crucial and sometimes destructive dependence on the centrally monitored system of tests and exams and boxes to be ticked and applied to children as young as seven.

In time, working as a lecturer basing my work on my ideal principles drained a great deal of both my emotional and intellectual energy, including as it did the supervision of the students actually working in classrooms right across the north-east.

Eventually I became tired and debilitated and rather sank into depression. I was told.  “Give your brain a body a rest, Wendy.” So that was why I came to leave the profession which I had relished so much.

 After a period of recuperation and rest, inevitably a new story started  to edge itself into my consciousness. Creativity abhors a vacuum. So it was that out of this jellylike morass emerges Susanah, my heroine, and around her, my first adult novel.

Reading Riches of the Earth now I realise that I had been distilling from my subconscious the voices, events and characters from my own rather troubled childhood when I experienced my day-to-day life with great intensity.   I see now that this intense inner reference came to inform and enrich my novels and stories as the years have rolled on.

For example, take Riches of The Earth - my first adult novel. As I read it now, the context and some of the feelings expressed in its pages bring to my mind my most recent book, Siblings, a short story collection written nearly 3 decades later than Riches of the Earth. It dawns on me now that this applies to most of my subsequent novels and stories.
 
However, I would emphasise that I do not tell the same story in every novel; it is much more complex than that.  In writing my fiction I am dipping into a complex multi-layered world buried deep within me.  As the years have gone by I have this process has been a strong element in my fiction. (I have written essays elsewhere here on Life Twice Tasted about this mirage-like border between memoir and fiction.)
 
And now I am I am beginning to realise that, in collaboration with my friend literary archivist Donna Maynard, in this process of the exploration of all my work, I am rediscovering myself as a writer and a human being.
I honestly don’t remember thinking about all this as I wrote the novel. Like each of my novels Riches of the Earth  flowed from my head through my arm into the ink and onto the page. It is dawning on me now that my academic research and my understanding of children and their thought processes filters through into the novel, as it was very much part of my recent life at that time. My instinctive insight into the lives of my evolving characters was nurtured by and grounded in my professional insights and principles.  

So-o-o, here I am recognising that, in writing all my novels, I was then and have been since influenced by my own contemporaneous experience of family life as well as my research – lending sociological and psychological insight alongside the instinct and commitment to what my characters would do next. I do remember loving my characters who reminded me of my own growing children and also the young people who had filled my professional world for so long.

Having completed Riches of the Earth I was delighted that  the prestigious publisher Headline – then newly established - wished to publish the novel when I first offered it. Once there I welcomed the support and insight of my editor, the wise and gifted Anne Williams  She guided and supported with me on my journey through a good number of books. I felt I was in very good hands until she moved on to higher things, eventually taking on her present role as a respected agent. Her writers are very lucky. My next editor - Harriet Evans – a talented writer herself, was also very supportive of my novels as they emerged. Interestingly, Harriet has proceeded to become a very much-admired novelist in her own right.

At this point I need to continue the discussion which I started in the last essay on Life Twice Tasted about the significance of covers. Delighted as I was at the time that Riches of the Earth was to be published.  the original hardback cover – although it seemed like a bit of magic at the time – now looks predictable and stereotyped and not really true to the energy of the narrative. You will see this included here. However, you will also see that the cover of the paperback, published in the same year, is infinitely better than the hardback cover. Susanah’s face at the top is alive and has a sharp contemporary feel. The World War I aeroplanes on the front and back cover offer a predictive reference to the role of World War I in the narrative. Altogether the paperback cover has much greater energy and narrative reference,

So, as I read Riches of the Earth again after more than thirty years, I enjoy afresh revisiting the varied characters as they live their lives from1895 right through to 1914, culminating with the international shock of the First World War. As with novels written during the following decades, many issues precious to me are woven into the narratives – identity, class, war, comradeship, women’s lives, the nature of work, family politics, birth, death, and here in this novel, pacifism.

 In this and further novels I observe myself as a kind of ghost in my own family, going back through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, dipping into my Welsh, Scottish and Irish heritage. It seemed to me that in this novel, Susanah, the central character. and Caradoc her father are particularly recognisable. I can see myself clearly dipping into my own Welsh heritage and particular perceptions of family life politics.

 In Riches of the Earth I observe that the pattern of power and control in the family is threaded through the narrative arc of the novel as it is in further novels. I note with retrospective approval that in this narrative as well as the others I have not been reduced to stereotypes or sentimental image is of north-eastern family life.

 Incidentally in reading the book again I am also reminded that I have alluded to an historically true event - within the fictional narrative. This is when a young soldier hitches a ride with a pilot who is flying reconnaissance over the battlefield. The boy is amazed as he looks down at the River Somme spread out below him in the French landscape. This incident was inspired by a detail from my research into letters, memoirs and personal histories from that time. Like other true elements, it serves to enhance the authenticity of in my fictional story –   all emerging from my deep research into contextual sources which provides and continues to provide deep realism into what are fictional narratives in all my novels.

 Lastly,  for your further interest I have included here below the synopsis - probably created by Anne Williams – of the story from the cover of the hardback. It is an excellent example of a well-written synopsis. Here it is:

When, in 1895, the Laydon Joneses move into Selby Street they are just another Welsh family who have come to work in the mines of County Durham. But Caradoc Laydon Jones, dour, unforgiving and in his spare time a genius of clockmaker, is a force to be reckoned with, whether it be down the pit, or in the chapel, or in his home where he rules with an iron fist. His daughter Susanah has inherited his strength but will not, she is determined take on his bitterness. And Jonty Clelland the young pacifist schoolmaster by whom she is increasingly intrigued, is the antithesis of her father. At the annual young people’s camp in Livesey Woods it looks as if the attraction between Jonty and Susanah might finally blossom into love - until tragedy intervenes. The news is brought that Susanah’s younger sister has been drowned in the colliery pool and before long her timid mother, who had never learned to speak the language of the English has followed her into her grave.

Overwhelmed by guilt, Susanna is left to look after her grief- maddened father and a handful of brothers, estranging herself from the man whose arms were around her as a little sister drowned. And when her vivacious friend Betty died in childbirth, leaving her husband, local football hero Mervyn Sargant, alone with a tiny baby, Susanah knows what she must do. Without fuss she adopts the child and, at his pleading, finally agrees to marry the broken Mervyn. But as the country enters the nightmare of the First World War, Susannah, prompted by her warm hearted Aunt Bel, begins to realise that life was to be seized and lived – that she, as much as those she loves, has a right to all the riches of the earth has to offer.”

“A vividly textured novel, steeped in the passions and the politics of the north-east, which is the of the Earth is Wendy Robertson’s first novel.”

 

Language, Power and Studs McGuire

 Decades ago I was working as a senior lecturer, running a complex household of hard-working husband and two talented, resourceful children, keeping an eye on my clever mother, and – as well as this – working on my Master’s degree in Education.

And I was loving all of this

My research was entitled Language and Power. As well as the historical and theoretical aspects of this research I completed the practical element at a Teesside secondary school. The school had an outstanding head teacher, the late, great Malcolm Glenn, who was eventually an eminent HMI. Malcolm was a liberal-minded and forward - thinking educator and this – the location of my research - was a very happy and very successful school.

My research made use of qualitative method - interviews and conversations with eleven - to fifteen-year-old pupils - to discover how these children perceived and experienced the power structures within that school. Location was important; I interviewed and spoke with pupils only in the corridors and obscure corners of the school - specifically not in places which signified the concrete power of that institution such as classrooms, staff rooms et cetera.

The eventual merging all this loose qualitative material into a viable research document was a complex writing experience, incorporating the making of significant links in the data, formulating ideas and ultimately writing a coherent document.

In later years, as I proceeded to write and publish a string of novels, it dawned on me that this research and writing process had not been dissimilar to writing a long novel. It also dawned on me that in this academic process of writing up my research I was - without intention -honing my novel-writing skills: these two aspects of my creative experience were merging in an interesting way.

In Malcolm Glenn’s school, relationships between adults and children are open and mutually respectful, so the children and young people here accept me as I walk around in the school with my notebook and my odd questions. I think they quite like loitering in corners talking to this strange woman.

One time a tall, heavily built boy comes up to me and says “Hey Miss! You’ll want to talk to me!” His voice is surprisingly deep.

I look up at him. He is half a head taller than me.

Pen hovering over my notebook, I ask his name. This is always my first question,

“Me name is Stewart,” he says. “But you can call me Studs. They all call me Studs.”

In time I was pleased to deliver my research, nicely bound in black leather, which qualified me for my master’s degree. Afterwards I was flattered when my supervisor invited me to proceed to a PhD. I thought hard about it and decided not to take this path, as I was now working on my third published children’s novel, after which I was planning to embark on my first adult novel.

And now, decades later in this ongoing review of all my novels and stories that I am working on with my friend Donna M, we come to the novel called The Real Life of Studs McGuire. (Published 1987).

In working on this book as I was developing my main character – a tough resilient boy who vows to revenge his friends – I remembered the boy in Malcolm’s school called Stuart, the boy who stopped me in the corridor while I was wearing my researcher’s hat and said, “My name is Stewart but you can call me Studs.” This was when, trusting my instinct, I borrowed his name and perhaps something of his personality for my main character in this new novel - Studs McGuire.

The naming of characters is so important in fiction.  I’m now thinking about the issue of naming for my most recent collection Siblings. (Published in 2021). For this collection I pored over academic sources of Welsh and Scottish names for the seven brothers and sisters, each of whom has a story in the collection set in 1922. I wanted names that would reflect their Celtic heritage. The chosen names reflect the unique nature of each character whose story is being told.    

Now, as Donna M and I handle the book called The Real Life of Studs McGuire, we note that the cover art has some resemblance to the cover art of Theft, my first published children’s novel. (See earlier post about Theft.) In each case the visual story arcs are very similar. There is such energy and implicit knowledge of children’s life there, as the action surges to the centre front of the cover. And the urgency within the narrative is reflected in the illustrators’ images for the two books. It is only all these years later that Donna M. points out to me that the artwork for both of these covers was by the artist Steve Braund.

You might be interested that I republished The Real Life of studs McGuire in 2014. This was an interesting exercise but I still prefer Steve Braund’s artwork to my own concept for the new cover which is it must be admitted modern, sharp, and dramatic. What do you think?

I have to say that I am realising now this journey with Donna M. through the sequence of my novels maps my writing life in all its aspects. It is all proving very exciting.  

And afternote: you might be interested in the different cover copy on each of these editions.

1987 Edition of The Real Life of Studs McGuire

Studs McGuire is determined to find out the identity of the kids responsible for taking his friend. Tony on a drugs trip. As a result, Tony lies unconscious near to death in hospital and studs is set for revenge. And then comes Nova – and studs that never met anyone like this girl before. We’ll never cooperate with him on his quest to find the loathsome flicker with his punk followers, The quest is a dangerous one, but still feels Tony’s very life depends on the outcome. 

Available HERE 

 

2014 Edition of the real life of Studs McGuire:

“Maybe I can do that, Studs.” Tony’s voice squeaked a bit but he coughed and said, “See you then! In a deeper tone. He turned round and banged out of the café followed by his two advisers. Almost instantly the rest of the kids in the corner stood up and trickled out. The big lad called Sligger averted his eyes as he passed Studs in the girl.

Available HERE 

 

The Evolution of my crossover novel, LIZZA

I have been working with my great friend the literary academic Donna Maynard on an archive project, which she hopes will link my hundreds of notebooks with the succession of novels which have been published over my name in the last 50 years. The process will take a year or so but should prove interesting.

We began by considering my first published work – Theft, a children’s novel from 1972, published by Corgi Transworld (Scroll down to read a post here called ‘The 50 Year Novel.’)  

And now Donna and I are considering Lizza, my young adult novel, published in 1987 by Hodder $ Stoughton. We examined both editions: of Lizza - the hardback and the paperback editions.

First, we look with fresh eyes at the hardback cover - illustrated by Steve Braund. I admire it for its sensitivity and its own storytelling arc.

Then we compare this with the cover of the paperback which, as you can see, is much sharper and more modern, but still very appealing and charming in its own way. But after forty-five years, although I remember the novel very well, I had almost forgotten the details of the covers.

Now a frisson of shock ripples through me as the details of these covers remind me of myself at the particular time of writing.  

On the hard-back edition, the biographical blurb reminds me of myself at this time in 1987: a younger self that bedded herself deep into the background of my present day.  life. Here - in the words of my first great editor, Anne Williams - is what the cover says about this young, aspiring writer:  

“Wendy Robertson is senior lecturer in education at Sunderland Polytechnic. She has been writing since she was 16, but because of a full-time career much of the writing remains unpublished. In 1973 her first novel Theft was published in paperback k by Corgi Transworld and for several years she also wrote a weekly article on a variety of subjects for the Northern Echo and she has published and she has had several stories published in magazines.

"Wendy Robertson lives in a Victorian house at the centre of Bishop Auckland, County Durham, which he loves because yours is obsessively interested in what she calls ‘the past in the present. What is reality and what is fantasy can never be disengaged,’ she writes. ‘In my writing I take this a stage further placing my magic imagination at the service of the basic story which may be a well-rehearsed refrain. She is married with two grown-up children, a boy and girl.”

Dear reader, I still live in that same house. Lizza came out  forty odd years ago and this statement was very true of my life at the time, which was a combination of a very committed family life and a very intense working life, where my long-term lifetime commitment to writing had to be squashed in around college vacations, transporting children to their schools, visiting museums and art galleries for my interest and for their education. Also at the time I was involved with the early stages of Women’s Liberation. 

And so it was that with the publication of Lizza by this major publisher I was finally given permission to acknowledge that I was indeed a writer which would allow me at last to place the writing of stories to their proper place at the centre of my life. (Lizza - a so-called 'young adult' novelm- proved to be my crossover novel between children's fiction and adult fiction.)

This meant tailing off my work in higher education, where I had learnt a lot and which I had really enjoyed. In reality I still went on to sustain my commitment to education in that I transferred this to the running of writing workshops and a commitment to mentoring new writers  

But always at the centre of my life were my long novels, which I went on to complete at the rate of just about one every year for the next couple of decades. I had certainly become a novelist.

One interesting thing about this 1987 blurb – as I say, forgotten by me since then – are my quoted comments on the cover: 

‘What is reality and what is fantasy can never be disengaged.’ And “In my writing I take this a stage further placing my magic imagination at the service of the basic story which may be a well-rehearsed refrain.’

I had forgotten that I had made this declaration on the cover of Lizza, but now I must say that I have continued to write and work from these principles in all the decades since. Evidence for this commitment still exists in many of my posts here on Life Twice Tasted. I have also preached these principles in many of my writing workshops.   Check here 

I am sure I have written or expressed those same feelings this year and in all the years since the publication of Lizza.  You will find similar principles expressed throughout my blog posts.  

I am looking forward to collaborating with Donna in creating and documenting this archive. And in the process I will learn a good deal about myself and my writing life. In short it will be another story taking its place in the the web of stories which constitute this writer’s life.

For your possible interest check here for  a list of my Publications:-