Outsiders – Kitty Fitzgerald

Kitty Fitgerald on the June Programme of The Writing Game

Posted on June 4, 2011 by wendyrobertson

Tune into THE WRITING GAME on  Bishop FM  http://www.bishopfm.com/listen/

2pm Sunday 5^th June  ‘My Theme is  OUTSIDERS’

The Writing Game is a programme for readers and writers from the broader region,  and – through the magic of the internet –  much further afield, (latest response from Rhode Island New York…).

In this thirteenth episode Outsiders we consider looking at life from the outside and the role of writer as outsider. The programme features novelist and playwright Kitty Fitzgerald, a long term resident in the North-East who came originally from Ireland by way of Yorkshire. Kitty’s novels are peopled by outsiders – particularly Jack Plumb the disabled anti-hero of her nationally acclaimed novel – originally a radio play – the brilliantly inventive Pigtopia.

We also hear an extract from a novella by Avril Joy who evokes with great insight the lives of those ‘Outsiders Inside’- women in prison.

I hope you like it… wx

Catch this programme live at 2pm on June 5^th or afterwards on podcast -

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/category/podcasts/

Don’t forget that all thirteen programmes are available  on these podcasts.   Listen to a wide range of writers talking. Try last month’s programme Words & Music which features composer musician Andy Jackson and poet Su Kane on their music/prose work Whispering Stones, inspired by Durham Cathedral.

‘This programme celebrates the breadth and depth of the talent of writers working and living in the North. The informality of the Writing Game allows writers to speak their mind and all the conversations are building into a significant archive of Northern writing talent.’

Wendy Robertson.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Everything comes together.

In the last year the writing has been  going well but I tend to take on too much and have got into the dangerous habit of catching up with my own shadow and forgetting how to relax.

Then I read a book* about the Haida Mythtellers of North America, which has made me think a lot about the ultimate  storytellers whom he compares with composers and artists rather than poets. He contemplates Valazquez’s painting Kitchen Maid With the Supper at Emmaus.

Bathhurst says, ‘Even for non-Christians (I am one) the young Valazquez’s painting opens a door; it confirms what every mythteller, physicist, biologist and hunter gatherer knows: that man is not the measure of all things.

In my workshops I often compare the writing of a novel with the process of painting a picture  – conceiving the idea, choosing your media, blocking in a large canvas, telling the story, trusting the hand and eye and the paint/pen, looking and looking until you think you’ve got it right…

In this month’s Writing Game I talk about this book and how stories emerge and are handed down through generations. How families and communities reflect the permanence of their identity with their myths. I also read an extract from The Romancer (see sidebar – one definition of Romancer is ‘mythteller’) about how stories have been handed down in my family and are integral to my novels which are – in the end -  ‘pure fiction’.

All this made me reflect on just how long it’s been since I painted. So I got out my paints and thought about the joy I had walking last week in the spring woodland among the bluebells.

And I set up on the big desk by the window, turned on Radio 4 Listen Again to the Desert Island Disc interview with consummate novelist Howard Jacobson, and began to paint. Then something else. Then music.

Three hours went by in a flash, and when I emerged with the half-finished picture I knew I had been relaxing, not working. I felt refreshed, stimulated. endorsed.

So now I’ve been rehearsing saying ‘No!’ to people and have put painting on my permanent ‘to do’ list.

For me relaxation means emotional survival.

wx

* Recommended to me by Kathleen Jones – A Story as Sharp as a Knife  by Robert Bringhurst

The Subtlety of Collaboration

 

by Wendy on May 9th, 2011

The Writing Game this month features Andy Jackson, composer,  and Su Kane, writer,  in conversation about their collaboration on a piece called Whispering Stones, about Durham Cathedral.

They express beautifully the nature of the project and the subtlety of artistic collaboration.  It’s now a podcast** and includes some thoughts on story making (me), and blogging for writers (Avril Joy).

This made me think about my own view of collaboration. The Writing Game is to some degree collaborative I suppose. And one of my novels Sandie Shaw and the Millionth Marvell Cooker started as an idea for a stage play but when I realised how much negotiation, collaboration and concession would be involved I rather retreated from the idea and seven years later wrote it as a novel.

Perhaps a novelist cultivates that element of total control: a writer is creator, location manager, actor(s) and director – only conceding the role of producer to the publishers.

However i do enjoy collaborating with my friends Avril Joy and Gillian Wales in Room To Write the  organisation to encourage and develop aspiring writers which also supports and inspires The Writing Game.

So I can’t be an entire megalomaniac…

**Listen to Writing Game podcast on story, on words & music collaboration, & blogging for writers http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/

PS As you see, I’ve been walking in bluebell woods. Perfect English spring. Very inspiring….

wx

From → Bluebells, Collaboration, Spring, Writing, Writing Game

One Comment →

1. 

   avril permalink

   I agree Wendy – as a novelist one is generally on one’s own and there is something very satisying about the control this brings

   But like you I enjoy collaboration. It is always inspiring in some way, it feeds into the writing -besides which it’s fun and very life enhancing to work with one’s friends in this way.

   Love the bluebells!!

Ink pens and Umbilical Cables

Apr 11 11

by Wendy

It could have been the two consecutive days of sunshine. It could have been a desperate need to escape from dark moments when the novel-in-waiting couldn’t hustle its place between meetings about the Divan writer’s celebration, about the radio programme. about a new publishing venture. It could have been because of promised evaluations for writers or the planning for this Wednesday’s launch of An Englishwoman in France 

Whatever it was, I simply couldn’t get on with my new novel. Now I have to tell you it’s my fine boast that I can usually do this among the sturm und drang of everyday life. I often tell new writers that the writing has to be the first thing you do, your prime project.

But the problem was that I’d actually resorted to thinking that, so save time, I could skip the hand- drafting and jump to working straight onto the machine. After all I wrote reams on the machine to service other aspects of my life. And I’d lost two ink-pens and the time to go and replace them was very fugitive.

So it was that my time to create was bundled up with all the other tasks (including blogging); tied by a kind of umbilical cable to the computer.

But my precious story – it seemed – was having none of that. She was sitting on the windowsill kicking her heels muttering, when-you’re-ready, when-you’re-ready.

Then one day my A4 drafting book fell off the table in the little study. I flicked through the pages and admired the inky flow of my own writing and the energy of those paragraphs before they were transcribed onto the computer.

In a second, it seems,  I was in Ryman’s choosing a new ink-pen and a fresh bottle of ink. Then the sun came out and when I got home my story was sitting on the garden table ready to flow out of the bottle onto the page of the A4 book.  All that day and the next and the next… Whoosh!  Talk about the genie springing out of the bottle! Pure magic.

wx

Portrait of a Town - the April Writing Game

The Writing Game on Local History

Sunday 10 April at 2pm on Bishop FM (105.9)

  

You’ll have noted that The Writing Game has strayed into the peaceful stretches of Sunday afternoon. I hope you enjoy it in this more leisurely space. And, as always, if you can’t make it then and there, you can download our podcast after the 10th April http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/category/podcasts/and listen in your own selected leisurely time where listening to writers and thinking about books could be a very good thing to be doing.

Commentators from outside say how much they like the way the Writing Game renders an image of a certain part of England. I think they and our local listebere will like today’s programme - on writing local history

Like so many Writing Games our April programme is grounded here South Durham – today specifically my own town of Bishop Auckland which is the home of Bishop FM . And always we place ourselves in the broader context of the nature of writing history.  The Writing Game is local in its focus, but never parochial in its attitudes

So today our main point of consideration is the local history of Bishop Auckland. Both  of my guests today talk about how a sense of local history fosters a particular, unique identity.

In pubs, cafes and shops on Newgate Street, our main shopping street - if you dig several feet down you will find Dere Street an important Roman Road - on Newgate Street in the pubs, cafes and shops, you can witness the habit of Bishop people of reflecting on their intricate, shared past. They talk of the people and the families they have known – names emerge like a biblical litany – his mother.. his grandmother .. his cousin – and so and so begat so and so –

You can her talk of the schools as they were, the celebrated football tam, the Thursday and Saturday markets, the choirs, the churches, the anniversaries, the Romany funerals, the old bishop with gaiters……

Stories sing in the air of Bishop Auckland  ringing with pride and a true sense of identity

My first guest for April,  Barbara Laurie has tried to capture all this in words, to nail it to the page in her local histories. As well as writing these histories. Barbara is a teacher from a family of Bishop Auckland teachers, has been Mayor of Bishop Auckland, a county councillor and is now a district councillor.  Peter Laurie her husband, will read a wonderful piece that he wrote about the traveller- hawker tradition in Bishop Auckland from their website www.bishopaucklandhistory.com

(Look it up! All the books we mention  are shown on the website.)

Then, to complement Barbara’s view of writing local history ,we have regular Writing Game contributor Glynn Wales reflecting on the way the historical idiosyncrasies of Bishop Auckland may or may not fit into the context of historical writing in general but how it may reinforce a sense of local identity in a national setting.

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I hope my regular listeners find me here on Sundays and continue to enjoy The Writing Game. I’ve had messages – word of mouth and email from listeners here in South Durham and – through the magic of the Internet – from much further afield -  as far away as Melbourne in Australia and Kentucky and New York in America.

Here is one from America

> “I enjoyed the podcast conversation with David Almond. I want to look for his books. These programs are wonderful. I loved listening to the children talk about the books they'd read (of course I adore their accents); and I closed my eyes listening to the Fireeater---my God the suspense in that and feelings it drew out. The reader is marvellous. You are so fortunate to be able to participate in such a great undertaking as The Writing Game programming. “

And another:

> “I listened to the podcast of The Writing Game with Wendy Robertson. The poet who spoke about basing much of her work on Horace sent me to my old school anthology, in repose right here beside me on the bookshelf, to read him again after 48 years. One of four included poems is Mortality---of course, why not. AND, it is an ODE--- Horace: Poetry 101. Love your comments.”

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NEXT MONTH – May Programme – Words and Music

The Writing Game talks to another couple who live at the heart of Bishop Auckland –               Andy Jackson and Su Kane. Andy is a composer and musician who is, among other things, the creative director of The Cobweb author which performs across the region hundreds of times a year. You will also remember Su, who ran The Evergreens and also gave poetry and drama workshops at Bishop Auckland Town Hall. They will be talking about their writer-musician collaborations, particularly their cantata Whispering Stones, about Durham Cathedral. We will hear the magical blends of their words and music. A treat in store for all of us..

Zurbarania

 

 

My house is close by  Auckland Castle – the home of the Bishop of Durham - which, in the  last thirty years. has been part of  our family experience.  I have have walked in the adjacent Bishop’s Park in all seasons.  The park and its Deer House feature in several of my novels. not least my latest An Englishwoman in France. My daughter was married  in the Bishop’s Chapel and after the wedding we emerged into the winter dusk to sparklers and mince pies. I have sent visitors there in Autumn to relish the wonderful autumn colour made so because of the inspired planting two hundred years ago. I have been to concerts and events there and walked off many a dark feeling  on its wandering pathways.

I admired a series of thirteen rather dark paintings in the dining room – the inspired purchase of a former bishop. These were eventually cleaned to reveal thirteen portraits of Sevillian citizens by the Spanish painter Zurbaran – to represent Jacob and his twelve sons – founding fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. They were originally destined for South America but  by a series of coincidences - including piracy – became the property of this bishop.

In a recent example of what is a modern brand of piracy. the Church Commissioners attempted to sell the paintings, now valued at fifteen million pounds, to the highest bidder. A campaign began to swell among to local people, led by Dr Bob McManners  of the Civic Society. Then local and County councillors. the local MP  and many others swelled the ranks. The Northern Echo lived up to its own heritage as a campaigning newspaper and took up and endorsed the cause, providing the much needed oxygen of wider publicity.

I sensed a helplessness, a hopelessness here and there. After all where stood the needs and identity of people in a small town in opposition to the ravages of  asset stripping bureaucrats of  the institutional church? The campaign was well meaning but really a lost cause wasn’t it?

And Lo!  there was a miracle!

As Chris Lloyd reports in today’s Northern Echo:

‘Zurbarans saved - Auckland Castle to become major attraction

TWO wealthy financiers have teamed up to save the Zurbarans and potentially turn Auckland Castle into a major heritage tourist attraction, The Northern Echo can reveal.

Evangelical christian Jonathan Ruffer has agreed to buy the Zurbarans for Auckland Castle.

Mr Ruffer, 59, was born in Stokesley in North Yorkshire, believes the masterworks should be put on public display.

It is hoped that there were be several sources of money for the Auckland Castle project, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund and the Department for Culture, but £1m has already been pledged by the Rothschild Foundation, a philanthropic organisation chaired by Lord Jacob Rothschild.’

 

Halleluya! It seems Mr Ruffer is offering fifteen million pounds to buy the paintings for Bishop Auckland. And Mr Rothschild is offering one million pounds to support the development of this project.

So a stranger has intervened in the history of this town which will now be changed by his action. It’s an object lesson for all of us, in these times of powerlessness, to see what can be done when ordinary people get the bit between their teeth.

Today, splashed across the front of the Northern Echo  is the Good News. it’s time we had Good News don’t you think?

Launching An Englishwoman in France

Please join me 7pm in Ponteland Library on Wednesday 13 April     to celebrate my new novel —                   An Englishwoman in France— the first of a three novels set in the Languedoc—an atmospheric and strange part of France which I love. Share with me some of the story and the novel’s secrets over a glass of wine. I look forward to seeing you

Copies will be available

… Wendyx

If you fancy joining me ring the library to confirm numbers   01661 823 594

(If you can’t get there the novel is available on Amazon  or you can obtain a copy from me at wenrob73@hotmail.com)

…Stella is pretty relaxed about her gift of second sight, but . . . my partner Philip thinks I’m barmy. No, seriously, he thinks I’m mad! In fact I’m very normal – normal as any of us ever is. Me, I see the dead in the more ordinary way of things. I saw this woman standing behind the woman at the till in the Spar shop. She was very old and wore a red sari with gold edges. She was like smoke in the air . . .

Stella’s happy-go-lucky attitude to her gift screeches to a halt when Siri, her twelve-year-old daughter, is savagely murdered and Stella can find her daughter nowhere, in this world or the next. Then, in the old French town of Agde she meets Louis, a clever, mysterious man and a young boy who is always near him. These two lead her to a place and a time where her search for Siri takes on a new meaning.

From ‘The Romancer’, my book about the writing process:

This house is the inspiration, of course, for An Englishwoman in France. From the first time I saw it I had this weird feeling that I knew this place, that I’d been here before. And so the writing, the chapters, started to unfold in my head and find their way nto The Notebooks. I felt there had to be someone here who could see – even move through time into the layers of the old city. And so the astrologer Stella walks into the story, into this house, to regain her sanity after the insanity of the murder of her daughter. She drops through time to meet the boy who will eventually be martyred and become St Tibery, the patron saint of the mentally ill….’

New Blog Address for LTT...

Dear Friends

My blog, A Life Twice Tasted, is now integrated with my website at

www.wendyrobertson.com

Same blog, same person, different place ...

Please do come over. I've been missin' you!
wxxx

Editing The Writing Game With Terry Ferdinand

 

Tonight’s Writing Game is our poetry special.

Hosted by regular presenter Avril Joy This month’s Writing Game features Thornaby poet Maureen Almond who bases some of her poetry on the classical Odes of Horace. It’s fascinating to hear how she tells her tales of the shipyards and their people using this sophisticated form. She also talks about the way she started writing poetry in her forties, and how she sets about writing her new poems  - a great insight for new poets.

Then Glynn Wales tells of how he used poetry to inspire a boy in his Ferryhill school to read more deeply and widely. And he reads for us Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled which has resonance today when are own young soldiers – some from our region - return injured from Afghanistan.

We also hear again from Kathleen Jones talking this time to Avril about her own ventures into poetry. (I’m looking forward to going to the launch of Kathleen’s book about Katherine Mansfield, The Storyteller at Foyles bookshop in London on 21st…)

My regular mentor James is away in London so I put together the final edit in my little cubbyhole studio with the help of my friend Terry Ferdinand who is a very good teacher. I learned lots. He says he’ll show me how to interleave music with the segments next time. I’m looking forward to that as it will make  the whole thing  much smoother. I’m still on my learning curve.

 

I’m also looking forward to listening to Terry’s programme on Bishop FM next Sunday at four o’clock. Check Terry F out on Bishop FM 

And I hope you’ll go to The Writing Game on Bishop FM 

to check out our poetry special

Tonight at 7pm Tuesday 11th January

You might like to know that Terry has made  the podcast

so those outside the area  of you might like to download it

after the broadcast,

A New Journey for The Romancer – she’s now available Online

They say learning new things keep you young. If that’s the case then I’m getting younger every day. On the inside anyway.

The latest is that after something of a journey of discovery i have created a way in which you can from from me in a collector’s  edition through Amazon. Click on One new 7.99 This means it will be available for friends at home and abroad so hooray for that. I’m dying now for someone to give it a try to see if it works, If it does I will do the same for all my books.

I’m just looking round now for something else I need to learn…

wx

First Reader for The Romancer

I was touched to hear from Anne Ousby, who brought a real smile to my face this morning. She’s just reading The Romancer.

‘I've started The Romancer and am finding it gripping. Obviously it's autobiographical but also written as a story - much like your other novels and it seems to me that there's enough distance between the you and 'the girl' to almost forget it's about you. I love the way you've introduced true stories that inspired your novels and woven them into the narrative…’ 

Anne is a playwright, short story writer and now a novelist. A member of our Room To Write conference, she has just brought out her intriguing novel Patterson’s Curse. Anne Ousby  RtW loved her novel and encouraged her in getting it out there, where it’s now selling well.

It’s so heartening for me to get a perceptive reader’s comment on my much loved  hybrid literary creation.

I hope other people out there are reading and enjoying it and would love to hear from them.

Stop Press

I see copies of The Romancer have not yet arrived at Amazon. (Can’t think why …) If you are in a hurry to get one for Christmas for your writer buddies you can get one directly from me (wenrob73@hotmail.com)  Email me with an address and I’ll invoice you and despatch it directly. I’m very keen for people to read it sooner rather than later . wxx

Books In The Snow

by Wendy on December 3rd, 2010

Nine days since the launch of The Romancer and the snow is still unremitting.  It closes in and fogs up the brain. I thought concentration would be easier confined as I am to the house. But no it’s curiously harder.

Still, today I’ve laid down the tracks for the 6th December Writing Game for Bishop FM. It features the inimitable Pat Barker and a choice of Christmas books from friends of the programme.  (James suggests that Bishop FM may apply to put The Writing Game on itunes. A fine thought, just about compensating for the wall of snow – picturesque but imprisoning.)

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CHRISTMAS BOOK SUGGESTIONS FROM FRIENDS OF THE WRITING GAME

Christmas Books on Bishop FM

Recommended by, among others, Pat Barker, Kathleen Jones, Debora, Pat Kidd.  Wendy,and of course, our official reviewers Glynn and Gillian

Frank: The Making of a Legend – Hardcover (4 Nov 2010) by James Kaplan:  Frank Sinatra Lissten to what Glynn says on the programme

Howards End is on the Landing: A year of reading from home by Susan Hill (Paperback - 8 Jul 2010)  ­ Listen to Gillian’s recommendation on the programme

The Singapore Grip – Paperback (1 July 1996) by J.G. Farrell. Listen to lynn’s recommendation on the programme.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (Virago Modern Classics) – Paperback (6 April 2006) by Elizabeth Taylor. Listen to Gillian’s recommendations on the programme.

Recommended separately by Debora in London  and Pat from Morpeth

Wait For Me: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister by Deborah Devonshire (Hardcover - 7 Sep 2010) The Duchess of Devonshire must be one of the last people alive who met both Adolf  Hitler and J.F.Kennedy. As the youngest of the legendary Mitford sisters, she has witnessed much of the history of the twentieth century from a ringside seat. Her humour shows here, as does her steely stickability; here is a unique patrician voice echiong down to us from the 20^th Century.

Chosen by Biographer Kathleen Jones’  who was featured in our November program. She would like to give:  The Still Point – Paperback (4 Feb 2010) by Amy Sackville  Kathleen  tells us  this  is a marvellous novel.  It’s the writer’s  first and … ‘ so beautifully written I’m in awe.  The way it’s narrated, the reader is like a ghost, haunting the characters, eavesdropping on their lives.  The story concerns a young woman, Julia, in a troubled marriage, whose ancestor was part of an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole leaving his very new wife behind.  The common factor between these two women, separated by time, is the house, which Julia has just inherited, full of artefacts, curiosities, diaries and letters and family history.  The narrative moves from the past to the present, weaving the stories of both relationships together until you come to a surprising, but very satisfactory conclusion.  It’s a marvellous blend of fact and fiction  and it deserved to be short-listed for Orange and Booker prizes, though it didn’t win.  I’m sure she will one day…’

And – to receive – Kathleen chooses -  ‘I would most like to receive Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Hardcover - 19 Aug 2010)    Kathleen says, ‘Detective fiction is one of my addictions.  Most of it is quite badly written, relying on the strength of the plot to carry the story forward and you read it to solve the puzzles rather than for the beauty of the prose.  But Kate Atkinson is a seriously good writer and prize winner of fiction, so when she began to write detective novels I was in bliss!  The books are such a good read I am always sorry to get to the end.  A new one is a celebration.  So, yes, please, this is one for my Christmas stocking!

Pat Barker – from today’s programme – chooses  Heartstone (Matthew Shardlake 5) by C. J. Sansom (Hardcover - 2 Sep 2010) ‘ The most recent in a crime series set in the reign of Henry 8Th centring on a hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake The others are Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign and Revelation. I can recommend all five books – to give and to get – with great enthusiasm. The in depth research never gets in the way of character and plot. Both the historical and invented characters are brilliantly drawn and the narrative pace never lets up. Even if you think you don’t like crime fiction or don’t like historical crime fiction please give this great series a try.

My own choice of  a book to receive is  Kathleen Jones’ Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller – Hardcover (30 Nov 2010) . If you remember Kathleen and I talked about this new book in the November Programme. Katherine Mansfield is a tragic and exciting figure – one of the three best ahort story writes of the first half of the 20^th century, As I am studying the short story for the March Room To Write Conference.  I am so  looking forward to reading this.

The book I’d like to give someone is  My Name is Mina by David Almond (Hardcover - 2 Sep 2010). Listeners will remember that David and I  discussed it at length on and early Writing Game. I am such a fan of good writing , in fact, that I would recommend any book by David Almond. Each one is a treasure in it own right. David’s books are marketed as children’s books but they read well at every level of age, sensibility and literary awareness.

And finally  – for Christmand cheer Debora in London Chooses to receive : Comfort and Joy by India Knight (Hardcover - 25 Nov 2010) The good, the bad and the funny sit alongside each other in this wonderful book about love family and Christmas.  This is a laugh out loud book –  enormous fun and perfect escape from  Christmas preparation. One reviewer says, ‘Yes there are stereotypes but they can be funny and comforting – I loved the characters such as Sophie – the mother who makes her own yoghurt, I loved Clara, I loved her funny rants about family, about Christmas, about stuffing the turkey and the ridiculous attempts we all go to to create ‘the perfect Christmas. It all rang horribly true, was laugh out loud funny, warm and somehow kind of glamorous.’ 

As you read through the joy and pain of her Christmas you can see elements of your own family Christmas.

I have to say that the range of books here demonstrate  just how much enjoyment, escapism and delight on offer from Books at Christmas. Even in the snow…

Edit

Snow Follies

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window. Alice Munro

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Gilly says she’ll close the cafe when we go.

The snow cranks itself up into a blizzard. People pass by - head down against the white onslaught, conscious of their hero-status. Girl sporting flat blonde hair and leopard spotted fur bustles by.

My  friend wraps up and braves the blizzard to plough her way to the park. Her mission is to take photos of trees  that have strutted their brilliant stuff in the snow for two hundred winters.

I – frightened of slipping - opt to stay by the window, drink a glass of chilled white wine and think about  my new novel which, thank the Lord, is set in sunny France. Nice to contemplate.

Gilly’s friend -  carrying a shovel, wearing work cap and fluorescent jacket  – makes his way to the door. ‘I’ll see youse!’ he says to Gilly.

I follow him through the door  and think of Gilly, clearing the tables and closing the cafe behind me.

Romancer One, Snow Nil

 

My heart sank when it snowed in the night and some roads became un-driveable, but still, out of eighty expected,  thirty five great, adventurous people joined me in the theatre to celebrate the launch of The Romancer.

 

Bishop Auckland Town Hall still put on a good show for me. We still had our silver stars and our air of celebration; I  still had my whole collection of books on show including photos of the very first launch, with the cake iced with the illustration from the cover of Riches Of The Earth.

 

 

 

I still had my timeline of books stretching from 1972 to 20010’

 

My friend Gillian Wales still managed the proceedings with her usual elan, standing beside the writer’s portrait painted by Fiona Naughton which rested  on the massive, black ,paint-splashed easel of the late Tom McGuinness, the wonderful artist whose biographies Gillian  has co-written.

 

 

My friend, writer Avril Joy, still read passages from The Romancer in her usual restrained, nuanced  fashion which lets the drama speak for itself.

There were still lots of copies of The Romancer to share and sign.

And still people talking, always talking. And people listening with focus and asking really good questions.

And Bishop FM’s Terry Ferdinand,  invisible behind his camera, was still taking these pictures.

Lots of writers to talk to…  some of them not quite on camera

 

  

 

And we still drafted in the boy who loves chocolate to flaunt the balloons and hand around Anton’s wonderful canapes.  And we still got to relish Anton’s Romancer Cocktails.           

 

So we drank a toast to absent friends who had not managed to get there  but were with us in spirit. And after all dratted the snow didn’t win.

And on Friday The brilliant Northern Echo published  my article about the personal significance of  writing The Romancer on its Leader page.

I called the piece ROMANCING THE NORTH   which seemed appropriate.

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If you fancy  seeing what all the fuss was about you can buy The Romancer direct from me - signed if you wish ( email : wenrob73@hotmail.com)

Or order it from good bookshops

Or from Amazon online

Or order it from your local library…

Wendyx

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The hand-made book – a game of Consequences?

by Wendy on November 22nd, 2010

The launch of The Romancer,  it has been decided,  will be in the theatre. Images of all twenty three- or is it twenty four? – novels will be hanging from purple ribbon. Anton, who caters in the cafe at the Town Hall,  is creating our signature Romancer cocktail and inventing intricate canapes.  I am looking for silver balloons.

In these pessimistic times in publishing I am determined to demonstrate optimism to the degree that I have designed and developed this book myself. I have commandeered Fiona Naughton’s portrait for the cover and have worked alongside Steve Tolson on the design of the outside and the inside of the book.

Gulp! With the launch of The Romancer ever nearer, I am now contemplating the consequences of my actions. For many years I have wanted to write a book about writing – well, my particular approach to being a writer. But I have not until now found the form that  would best express my peculiar approach.

But for now here, in an extract  from the book itself, is how it happened…

(Extract from The Romancer)

Setting the Scene

I am a lifelong admirer of the art of the biographer, who lives in the halfway house between history and personality. Returning from lunch with biographer Kathleen Jones one day, my head full of her new work on Katherine Mansfield and its connections with her biography of Catherine Cookson, I was suddenly inspired to make a ‘valid connection’ between my own life and my writing: a kind of creative memoir.   So I embarked on The Romancer – not a conventional memoir, but a kaleidoscope with all the elements of my life and experience as glittering fragments in the drum. Every time I shake this kaleidoscope a complex pattern emerges: each new pattern is a novel or story unique in itself.

             The Romancer is made up of three parts. First comes Inspirations, an account of elements – people, experiences, places, insights and feelings – from my own life that have, whether or not I was conscious of it, inspired my wide range of novels and stories. Inevitably this is the largest part of this book. Without such inspirations would there be anything to write? These elements are the glittering fragments in the drum of the kaleidoscope.

            Then Onto The Page celebrates many things – the poetic charm of getting the right words in the right place, the development of character, the evocation of place, the organisation of ideas, the architectural skills of  building a novel and the joys of editing and shaping one’s own prose. It involves seeing one’s work into print and the surreal, occasionally comical, vagaries of the world of publication….

Romancer : Don Quixote, anecdotist, daydreamer, dreamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fabulist, fictionist

 

So busy this month. Last Saturday was  the fab Room To Write Conference, which went very well. Super, dedicated writers full of hard work and good humour – a great deal achieved in a day. Three novels completed and published and several more on the way. The day was fine and the Whitworth Hall setting was superb. Blowing off the cobwebs ar lunchtime with a walk in the grounds was just the ticket. Hard but rewarding work for the participants and the leaders. Everyone learns something.

 

 

Wonderful day – wonderful writers….

 

Now -   Down to planning the launch of my new baby – The Romancer - which is a kind of hybrid memoir. Readers of Lifetwicetasted have read some extracts from this book – which is really about the process of writing counterpointed with aspects of a life in relation to the novels it inspired. I have copied below for you the press release details of the launch and an invitation to you, should you be around. Otherwise,  events on this blog on the next few days will act as a virtual launch – complete with extracts!

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Bishop Auckland Town Hall Book Launch Thursday 25th November 7.30pm

Celebrating The Romancer

Romancer : Don Quixote, anecdotist, daydreamer,
dreamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fabulist, fictionist,…

Bishop Auckland writer Wendy Robertson is celebrating her twenty five years in the writing game by publishing The Romancer, a unique mixture of memoir, original writing and novel extracts mapping her life in writing from early
beginnings in a family struggling to survive, to the challenges and delights of
making her living as a writer.

After an early career in education Wendy Robertson became a full time writer and
has written twenty four novels, a book of short stories, an occasional article and
was a Northern Echo columnist. She has been Writer in Residence in a woman’s
prison. She mentors new writers and gives writing workshops across the North.
Based in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, she now has her own Community
Radio Show The Writing Game where she is building an archive of writers talking.

‘Writing The Romancer,’ she says, ‘has truly been a labour of love.’

On reading The Romancer ;
‘…truth and fiction like two hands clasping…’ – a rare glimpse of what it’s like to be
inside the process of writing.’ Kathleen Jones Biographer
‘A moving and compelling exploration of the links between a writer’s life and her work.’
Pat Barker Booker Prizewinning Author
‘More than just a memoir… a master class in the writing process.’ Sharon Griffiths
Northern Echo Columnist & Novelist

 

The Town Hall invites all readers and writers to
join  Wendy in her Romancer celebration of
books and a writer’s life here on 25th November

To make sure of your  Romancer Cocktail -

RSVP to 01388 602 610 or Wendy at wenrob73@hotmail.com

 

NB If you cannot make the launch  The Romancer ;

will be available from 25th November

from good book shops, libraries, Amazon, or

Wendy at wenrob73@hotmail.com or Gillian at www.roomtowrite.co.uk

Visit Wendy’s website at www.wendyrobertson.com

 

Not being a poet…

Not being a poet I can’t call this a poem. It’s really more

A writer’s list…

Rain slicks the blue van to a shine

Water lies in pools on the market square

The market stalls have left their spoor -

Vague shadow of a bad day’s takings

Raindrops weigh down cyclamen

On the last flower stall.

A woman crouches like a dealer

In her hoodie: pillar box red.

Another woman, her bleached hair

Hanging like snakes, hauls

Her boy from school,

Both unwilling.

I have to say there’s something rakish

About a raised blue umbrella.

 

(PS This hosta is called a Blue Umbrella)

November Writing Game: a Sense of Place

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/2010/11/episode-7-fiction-sense-of-place/

Original air date: Tuesday, 2nd November.

No player? Right click, Save Target As - The Writing Game - Episode 7

On The Programme:

• Prolific and well loved author Elizabeth Gill (who hails from Crook)
• We also hear from David Williams whose territory is the streets of Newcastle and areas North of the Tyne
• Avril Joy reads from her new crime novel Blood Tide which begins with detective Danny beck watching a woman throw herself off the Tyne Bridge on a dark and threatening night
• And we hear again from Norma Neal who read her touching story Washing Lettuce on the October programme. This time she talks about beginning to write. Very inspirational.

Next month Books for Christmas. What you would like to receive and what you would like to give?

Have you any thoughts about this? I'll mention them on the December Programme.

wx

The Artist

I was re-editing some short stories for my new website and I thought you might  this short-short story. The Artist The artist showed a great deal of promise. He was known as the Valasquez of his generation. His treatment of light and his handling of symbolism was unmatched in his century. Even as a young man he astounded his mentors and his teachers. After his training, (which he passed with flying colours and without the humiliation of an examination), he hid himself in a peeling house at the end of a long beach and set up his easels. Using his phenomenal  eidetic memory he painted pictures of the teaming city which were somehow drenched with the light and the movement of the ocean. All he would accept for his paintings was a small pension for food and paint from the national museum. He thought to sell the paintings would chip off parts his own soul so he would no longer be able to paint. For ten years he painted in the beach house, his work becoming more distilled, more distinctively abstract. But there was this curious thing. No matter how abstract his painting became, even the most humble and unlettered person could understand his meaning and feel connected with the cosmos. Such people returned to their homes from the national museum and were kind to their spouses and children, knowing now that this was the only way to live. Some of them planted trees and flowers in their streets and alleyways to make their own personal contribution to the beauty of the world. So, the painter was considered by all to be a national treasure. One day he fell in love with a plumber who came to install a bath in the house on the beach. The plumber, a fine man with slender shoulders and a seeing gaze, had three children whom he brought to live at the beach house, The presence of the children inspired the painter to return to a more realistic style, He painted pictures of the children - in glowing shades of green and purple, aquamarine and ochre - jumping the waves and scaling the rocks. People who looked at these pictures became full of hope and knew things would be better in the new millennium. But then there was a great storm of water and the beach house was demolished. The plumber, having rescued the painter and his own children, died of a waterborne disease. In his will he left his tools and his children to his friend the painter. Now for the first time in his life the painter had to be responsible for more than the quality of his painting and the purity of his message. In these new days the well-being of his foster children became his highest priority. Just at that time a very rich man from Russia offered to build the painter a new house on the beach and as well he promised lifelong protection and security for the children. This was offered on the single condition: that the artist should paint a picture of Russian’s daughter, to be exhibited on the day of her wedding. Of course up to this point the painter had only painted out of his own soul, and had never taken commissions, But because he was looking to the security of the children he took on this special task. While the beach house was being rebuilt the children lived with a fisherman whose wife played bowls with them every day and let them win. During this time the painter lived in the house of the rich man, so he could concentrate on the painting of the future bride,. The bride lent him her wedding dress, which he hung from a rafter in his painting room, a sky-lit attic with a vast roof window. He placed the dress in a corner, where it could glow like a moth in the shadowy eaves. The bride herself posed for him seven times, lolling back in an exquisite Louis Quinze chair the painter had spotted in the music room. The girl had a dark, limpid beauty. The painter’s skin prickled in reaction to her sexuality and his senses melted as she made her availability clear. She told him she would do anything … anything … to make sure the painting was perfect, She had to please her father after all. That was paramount. In some desperation the painter told her that what she must - must! - do, was to sit in the chair and stay there. Otherwise the painting would disintegrate and her father would be annoyed. All the time the painter worked he would allow no one to see the painting. When the beach house was finished he had the painting taken there to add the final, finishing touches. So the nature of the painting was an unknown quantity as, on the afternoon of the event, the wedding guests - led by the father, his daughter and her groom, all arm in arm - came tripping merrily down the great staircase towards the portrait draped in black venvet, Standing to one side of the easel, dressed in their best, were the artist and his three foster children. The children were glowing with health, nut brown from the sea breezes, The shouting and the laughter stilled as the bride and her guests gathered round. Then, at last, the rich man pulled a tassel and the velvet shroud fell from the picture. The groom gasped. The bride fainted. People crowded in to see a canvas covered with a dense black- so dark that its depths took on a green mould. In the foreground the artist had rendered a perfect vision of an empty Louis Quinze chair. © Wendy Robertson,