I’ve created a FB page to invite you to take time out to be inspired to use your senses and discover morsels of joy where you didn’t expect to by simply being in the moment… and writing about it at
www.facebook.com/
This is in the run up to the Scarborough Flare Literature Festival’s
Postcard Challenge
on Thursday 24th to Sunday 27th April 2014
in the foyer at Vernon Road Library, Scarborough
see FB page as above / EVENTS on this website
Today is ‘My Writing Process’ blog tour day, when writers post about their writing process answering four set questions. Last week the effervescent Kate Evans posted hers and invited me to join the tour. I read Kate’s blog, visited her website and was in awe of how she utilises her creative self within every aspect of her life. Click here for Kate’s Post.
Here are my responses to the questions:
What am I working on?
My second collection of short stories – as yet untitled, though I have designed the image for the front cover in my head so the title won’t be far removed from that. Also in progress is a devotional book of prayer and meditation, my personal poetry and ongoing journal musings – though the latter two are not for publication, unless of course something metamorphoses into an absolute gem and encourages me to include it in a blog!
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Talking about my short stories, I am obsessed with the darker side of human nature and the subject of death, and explore this obsession within my fictional stories by using raw emotion from real experiences, which results in disturbingly compelling perceptions of the truth.
My prayers and meditations are also based on real experiences and as the topics are universal they can (and are) used as a resource in churches for pastoral/spiritual support. My poetry is a personal indulgence, again based on real experiences, and though I have had a few published in various anthologies in the past, I rarely put them out there.
As to the question, I’m not sure my work differs from others in the same genre, though I will state that my overall aim is to allow the reader to seek out their own truth from within my writing.
Why do I write what I do?
I can’t exist without writing creatively in some shape or form every day. It is a constant motivator to my personal well-being. I write to tease out hidden thoughts from within myself, based on my own or others’ experiences. I write to try and get to the truth of emotional impacts relating to various scenarios. I write to experience the joy in the sense of release when transferring emotional truths into fictional settings. I write because I can be open and honest about emotions within my work without fearing the consequences. I write to get rid of unhealthy negative feelings and turn them into something positive. I write to heal my wounded soul. I write because I enjoy it.
How does your writing process work?
Quite chaotically in the sense that I usually have lots of writing on the go at any one time and add to it as and when inspiration takes hold. When I feel I have enough material to complete one particular project, say a short story collection, I focus on that alone until it’s complete, placing the others on a back burner until I can pick them back up.
Ideas come easily to me through regular journal writing and everyday observations; I also find some of my memories in connection with my dysfunctional family background provide a lot of my material. Once the seed of an idea is planted in my mind, I tend to let it lie for a few days until it ferments and becomes so embedded that I think around it constantly. Once it’s at that stage, I use a sprint writing exercise to connect to what’s already started to develop in my imagination (write quickly without caring about punctuation etc – i.e. stream of consciousness). From this I glean the raw emotion for the piece. It then grows intuitively and branches out into strands of a story (or whatever it wants to be). It becomes the bones of a first draft. Then I start on the hard work that is the crafting and editing, again and again, until I’m satisfied with the piece of writing and confident that I’ve successfully wrapped and hidden my ‘self’ within the fiction. In other words, I’ve added layers of flesh to the bare bones of the initial raw emotion in a creative way.
And talking of adding layers, I’m now passing the baton on to Alan Combes who will continue the ‘My Writing Process’ blog tour on Monday 24th February. I met Alan last year at a Writers’ Circle and have a high regard for his varied writing skill.
Alan was born in Newark, Notts, and attended the Thomas Magnus Grammar when it was worth mentioning. He did teacher training at King Alfred’s, Winchester, and was awarded a degree by Nottingham Uni and later a Masters at York.
Alan’s first published piece was a poem about Adam and Eve which was a runner-up in the Lancaster literary festival. His first paid piece was about a camping holiday behind the Iron Curtain, published by the Guardian, which was a forerunner for his regular human interest pieces for that paper as well as a column in Young Guardian (not there now). As a teacher, he had a lot of pieces published in the Times Ed, then started writing football for the Observer, the Independent and, for 11 years, the Sunday Times. He began getting published for kids in 1997 and combined football and fiction for Barrington Stoke, producing two best sellers for dyslexic boys who were footy-mad. He toured Dublin on the back of his ‘Dead Man Files’, which was also written for young problem readers.
His musical ‘Black Potatoes’ filled the Upstage Theatre in York for a week in 2010 and he is currently submitting ‘Her Cambodian Bodyguard’, a play about Alzheimer’s, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
Read more from Alan on his website and blog ‘latest news’ at http://www.alancombes.co.uk
The 2014 Scarborough Literature Festival preparations are hovering in the background as Coastival gathers speed. Full program and tickets for Literature Festival will be available from the Information Desk at the Brunswick Centre (Scarborough) from March. Meanwhile see my events page for details of two of the projects I’m involved in… Writers on the Loose (Again) and The Postcard Challenge.
Sometimes, when I’m deep in thought and you speak to me sharp-tongued, I become trapped inside a memory because your lips have pierced an emotion from my past. Then, when the mood slips back into the present moment, I can fall apart so easily.
This morning, for instance, we were walking along the beach, trailing through the debris that the tide had left behind, when I came across a red carnation that had embedded itself within a rock. The sight of it made me hunger for the time when our love was new, and I wondered how long it would take me to stop counting the cost of that love.
As I was gazing at the flower, pondering this, you snapped at me to ‘get a move on’, your hurried tone lashing at my face.
Even now, the sting of it is with me still.
an emotional truth wrapped in fiction…
I finished work at 1.30pm today and walked through Scarborough town feeling at peace with the world. Why? I have no idea. In the midst of my life’s busyness I found myself smiling, hardly noticing that we are almost at the end of the first month of the year and still there is calmness at the central part of me. It could be that I have just recovered from a hacking cough I thought I’d be saddled with forever, or it could be that I’m on target with my current writing projects (always worth an act of kindness or two to myself), or it could be that the Freedom in Christ course I’m attending is actually working for me. Delving deeper each week (4th session last night) I end up with more questions than answers (as is usual when I attend these things), but I’m feeling pretty good with the journey that is my life, my writing and my faith.
I’m inclined to be bold and state that I’m walking on air in comfortable new shoes whilst reciting the serenity prayer. It’s working better than any other New Year’s resolution I ever made (see previous post).
Julie
It’s almost the end of the year and I’ve decided this year to choose a single word to guide me through 2014. This word will have the power to nudge me in the direction of faith, and help me to let go and let God, and so set me free from all that holds me to the past.
To choose my word, I thought about what I needed, what I’m currently working on, and what I need to let go of. As always, my writing project ambitions are lined up for the coming year and January is extremely busy on that front. But I’m organised on that score… I know this because I’ve written a schedule out in my new diary to keep on track with deadlines, etc. Everything is lined up and ready to go and I’m looking forward to it.
An ongoing personal challenge in my life is my failure to combat the sadness associated with a ten year family estrangement, and this year (as last year) no reconciliation has come to fruition, so I already feel overwhelmed at the thought of carrying the heavy burden of hurt with me into 2014, and beyond.
Therefore, the word I have chosen for this exercise is ‘serene’ and to help me with this I am using the Serenity Prayer by St Francis of Assisi and a breathing exercise:
‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.’
Or to put it another way:
‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths.’ (Proverbs 3, 5-6)
Although I have carried the Serenity Prayer in my diary for several years I neglect it sometimes and cause myself a lot of unnecessary pain and anguish. I am hopeful that In 2014, I will simply say the word ‘serene’ and it will prompt me to read it – at least once a day as well as each time I begin to feel maudlin, melancholic or plain old miserable about the situation. After saying the prayer to myself, I can then breathe in the breath of God and breathe out the negativity that’s causing suffering to my soul.
I suppose it’s a sort of New Year’s resolution, which are famous for being broken, but this is one I intend to keep – for the sake of my sanity – and how wonderful it will be for God to hear my soul singing with joy in 2014 instead of lamenting in despair.
With love and prayers to you all for a happy, healthy New Year.
I got to a point where I was almost ready to share a recent example of how being a Christian has changed me on the inside when the Flowers scandal erupted. It so disappointing and damaging to the church when people in powerful positions hit the headlines with their personal trash and weaknesses. Immediate judgement is cast upon the church (and Christians), as a whole, through the actions of that one person. It’s the same with any group. For example, how quick we can all be to judge homeless people as being drug users or alcoholics who, as I’ve often heard it muttered, ‘bring it on themselves’, and simply because we have seen examples of this being demonstrated by one or two homeless people. Tarred with the same brush is the cliché I’m looking for. Unfortunately, it is rare for any positive acts by Methodist Ministers, or homeless persons, to hit the headlines – because it doesn’t sell newspapers.
If, as a people, we could read newspapers that tell of good news and glorify it in the same way as bad, we would counteract the forces of evil at work in the world to create a more positive balance; this could go a long way to knocking the devil off all our shoulders before he can get a foothold.
Oh, the example I was going to share about how being a Christian has changed me on the inside?
I found a purse outside a charity shop a couple of weeks ago. It had 6 x £1 coins and £95 in notes inside. My gut reaction was one of excitement about finding some money. A split second later I counteracted that response by asking the question, ‘what would Jesus do?’
There was a piece of paper tucked inside the purse with a bus pass (so it was a pensioner) with a phone number on it. I rang the number – as it had the same name on it as the bus pass – to say I was on my way to hand the purse in to the local Police station.
The joy on the elderly couples’ faces when I walked into the station lit up the room. The lady whose purse it was gave me £10 because she was so thankful to get it back. It wasn’t necessary and I tried to return it to her, unsuccessfully. The warm glow in my heart at having turned the money in set me up for the rest of the day. Honesty really does have its own reward, though I have to say that I did enjoy spending the unexpected £10 windfall.
I’m using this incident as a small example of how I know that being a Christian has changed me from the inside because there would have been a time when I may have kept that money, especially if I’d been as skint as I was that day, but just by thinking about what Jesus would do, and knowing the answer in my heart, I couldn’t do anything else but hand it in.
I’m telling you this good news because it probably won’t hit the headlines: Jesus really has made all the difference in my life.
The title and theme for the annual Grace Bingham Trophy competition at the Scarborough Writers’ Circle was ‘In Your Dreams’, and part of the criteria set was to include the use of creative language.
How could I resist a chance to indulge in one of my favourite forms of writing? Poetics.
Here is the link (see note below added 8.2.14) to my submitted story… The Six-Sided Box by A Poetic Dreamer (aka Julie Fairweather) … the poetics of which are best read in a breathless manner so you need to invent your own pauses during the reading of these.
Oh, did I mention that this was the winning story?
Judge’s comments: ‘Superb! A real attempt to use language creatively, within dreamlike descriptions that take the reader through to the end where the true setting and meaning are revealed in what I found to be a very touching finish. Wonderful work!’
There is a metaphoric layer to this story that I hope potential readers from the targeted group will appreciate, and respond to in their own individual way.
My Current Status: floating on a cloud enjoying the euphoria whilst clutching the Grace Bingham Trophy.
Sorry folks… the story is currently unavailable to read on here as it is undergoing an edit for submission elsewhere.
This time last year I experienced a period of unrest and I wasn’t sure if it was related to a mild form of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) or simply that a special November birthday was almost upon me (I’m not telling!). It could have been either of these reasons as both lend themselves to melancholy. Same thing now… with the dark mornings due to kick in, I’m overwhelmed with tiredness at having to get up for work when I could easily stay in bed, especially as I’ve felt I need more challenge in my work-based role lately. But then – once more – a birthday is also looming… so here I go again. I feel I haven’t done enough with my life and the older I become the quicker it seems to roll away – a bit like when the end of a toilet roll unravels itself near the end and you have to catch it quick before it hits the floor.
This mood spread itself into my time of worship at church last Sunday and I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself really when I said to the person standing next to me, ‘I hope we don’t finish with sharing the words of the grace. It feels false, like it’s forced upon us, especially as half the people in church don’t even say hello to the other half.’ Needless to say, we did finish with that… but the preacher stumbled on the beginning of it by misplacing a word – twice. So it was third time lucky that we spoke the words in unison. I knew this was no mistake. It was a lesson for me – from God. That may sound strange to those who don’t have a faith but you may understand where I’m coming from if you read on. (It’s about me not remembering that God is with me when I’m in the midst of these negative mood phases, and therefore failing to acknowledge His grace.) Thank goodness that He doesn’t give up on me, and sends angels to rescue and remind me, as he waits for me to ‘catch on’ again.
Angel number one arrived later the same day. I bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while who is a fan of my writing. She inspired me to continue with my current work in progress – the devotional book I’ve spoken of in my blog recently – after I disclosed to her that I was at a standstill with it. I told her I want to revisit an experiment that has worked for me previously – ie, creating prayers from sketches – but I’m not good at drawing. I can’t seem focus on listening to God in the meditation method I use for simple sketching (well, I always know what my sketches are meant to be even if no-one else does!). My friend reminded me of my past experience with this in one of her art workshops and how I’d created a painting and subsequent prayer from that by simply letting myself go with a kaleidoscope of colour as I listened to God through music. This connected to a story I’d written the previous night about a kaleidoscope of colour and I felt inspired to use her advice as a way forward with the book. I went off to top up my supply of charcoal, oil paints and linseed to make a start on the blank canvas I’ve been keeping at arm’s length.
The next day angel number two stopped me in the street and we went for a coffee and a catch up – another friend and fan of my writing who, after deep therapeutic discussion about family estrangement and work related apathy (she is a trained counsellor by trade), inspired me further to continue with my devotional book project by saying my writing was a gift from God that I can utilise to inspire others. The off-loading was mutual, I hasten to add. She also had a few demons to exorcise.
The third day brought me angel number three – a fellow writer and member of the Writers’ Circle who said she was looking forward to hearing my Kaleidoscope of Colour piece as she delights in my poetics.
With these three cheerleaders in my corner how can I fail to make progress?
To top it off, I attended a New Wine event this weekend on ‘healing emotional wounds and memories’ (more about this another time) with two members from church. Another example of the grace of God that even with all my negative remarks about sharing the words of the grace in church, He still provided me with angels from that very place.
And there’s more…
Just when I thought it was all over… my work-role related grace came after I’d been brought to my knees because my computer decided to die and its black screen took my files to its grave. I asked God to forgive me for not being grateful for the job I had, for not thanking Him for the angels He sends to lift me from my myriad of moods, for not thanking Him for providing me with all I need, and for not thanking Him for the gift of each new day of my life. You may not believe it but I swear it’s true – I prayed for fifteen minutes and about an hour later a chance conversation with a work colleague during a phone call connected me to someone who had software to rescue my files. I contacted him immediately and was merely talking on the phone about the problem when the computer screen came to life of its own accord – my files had returned and I was able to drag them onto a pen drive before it completely packed in. Coincidence? Answered prayer? Miracle? I believe it was a grace of God incident.
I’ve decided not to feel that I haven’t done enough with my life because I believe it’s the journey that’s important. Taking time to appreciate those unexpected moments of joy and small acts of random kindness that flow through our lives constantly is what makes it worthwhile. And what more can we ask of that journey but that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us this day and for evermore?
I’ll be sharing the words of this special blessing prayer with gusto in future because grace is a soul-thrilling concept and must be deeply appreciated.
Amen
Still sort of facing a blank page with regards to my devotional book in progress, with many of the resources I’ve written branching off in different directions. The conclusion is that there are more things happening here and it is in danger of spiralling out of control – if it was ever within my control to begin with.
I have written enough material to cover various aspects of devotion to fill a filing cabinet… and am toying with ideas on how to proceed in weeding out irrelevant stuff and stuff that I’ve not repeated elsewhere. Hands up if you know what I’m even talking about. Ah, you must be a writer!
Do I concentrate on creating this work for an elective audience, i.e. the church I attend, or do I aim for a broader elective audience, i.e. all churches in the circuit, or do I make it secular? Every time I look at the content of what I’ve written I feel it could be adapted to fit all three of these. And, most importantly, the emotional aspects need to be separated too, ie, personal experiences and insights, a broader view and a still broader view for the differentiating needs of the potential readers of the three options. Maybe I have answered my own dilemma through talking it through with you on my blog? I have three separate projects.
I know in my heart this is what is hindering progress. I’m trying to work on all three simultaneously. This is me and my creativity in a frenzied mind game… my need of the stimulus that several ongoing projects feeds me yet also the need to focus on completing something. I could be in for a long haul.
Maybe I should stop singing ‘one day at a time, sweet Jesus’ and instead sing ‘one thing at a time…’