Still Learning | Still Feeling the Thrill

Amongst my other work so far this year I've managed to submit a number of fictional pieces in the hope of being placed in a competition or being accepted for publication. I'm still waiting to hear about some and have had mixed results with the ones I have had feedback on. I am learning (still learning, always learning) that writing for a fiction audience is very different than writing for an academic one. There are different expectations, 'rules' even, which are slowly beginning to make sense to me. As an academic I'm used to rejections and still get a thrill when a piece is accepted/published. It's the same for me with this 'new' writing.

One piece I first drafted a couple of years ago and have fiddled about with this was recently returned rather than published. The helpful advice I received include the following: 'When writing a short story it is usually most effective to tell it just from the perspective of the main character. . . Here it is you the author who is telling the story so we are able to see inside everyone's head'. The editor then goes on to provide evidence of how/where I have done this and how I might chance my style to make my main character more 'active'. I get this now as I think back on the novels/short stories I have read and enjoyed recently. I've revised the story and sent it somewhere else. Watch this space.

A piece of flash fiction writing (300 words this time) I submitted in January was long listed to 50 (out of 650 submissions) in the Bath Flash Fiction International Rolling Competition http://bathflashfictionaward.com/2016/02/award-round-up-february-2016/, It's the first time I've entered this particular competition so pleased to have got this far.

In addition to my fiction work I've written and submitted a couple of memoir pieces in the last couple of months. In my last blog entry I referred to a piece I had published on abctales within which I wrote a little about my relationship with my dad. I followed this up with another short memoir Invisible Mending which focuses on some memories of my mum. As with my other writing I have found this very helpful as part of my personal grief journey.

You can read Invisible Mending here if you would like to http://www.abctales.com/story/gletherby/invisible-mending

That's it for now.

Thanks for reading

Gayle

Some Recent Writings | Some Recent Successes

Following my previous reflections on the influence of my father – Ron Thornton – on my own writing I’ve been thinking further about our relationship and today posted a short piece which includes a little of how it feels to be older now than he was when he died. It’s called Older than Dad and you can find it at ABCtales (a great site for writers and readers of all genres) if you are interested http://www.abctales.com/story/gletherby/older-dad

I’m at Retreats for You  http://www.retreatsforyou.co.uk/a-writers-retreat/  in North Devon at the moment. As the website promises it is a 'good place to write' (and think, and rest) and alongside some academic writing I’m playing about with some fiction and (non-academic)

The lounge at Retreats For You

non-fiction. Although, like many others, I believe that there is a continuum between these so-called different types of writing and fiction writing is often related to, draws on, reflects real world experiences and factual pieces - based as they are on the memories, experiences and opinions of the particular writer – might not be the truth for all (or indeed anyone!).  So far since I arrived on Tuesday evening I’ve written the first draft of one short, short story (450 words) and I’ve gone back to several other pieces (each between 300 – 2500 words) and polished them up for possible publication.

Since I started to write fiction as an adult (sometimes, not always but sometimes related to my own experience or my research) in 2012 I’ve had several pieces that have been long or short listed or something similar. In the last couple of months I’ve been excited to win a couple of prizes:

Temper and Tenacity (a 500 word piece updating one aspect within Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice) was placed 3^rd in the Flash500 final quarter 2015 competition.

http://www.flash500.com/index_files/tqtp15.htm

He Loves Me, Not (a 300 word piece about a difficult choice) won the 2015 Hysterectomy Association women’s fiction flash fiction completion and is published in Hysteria 4: Volume 4 (Hysteria Anthologies) edited by Linda Parkinson-Hardman.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hysteria-Volume-Anthologies-Linda-Parkinson-Hardman/dp/0992742978

I like to think that dad would be chuffed.

Thanks for reading

Gayle 

More About and From Dad | Thoughts and Writings

The original 

I've been looking through some more of my father's writings and came across 20 or so pages of a piece of  'work in progress'. He hadn't decided on a title - A Book of Thoughts being one option and For Those in Peril another. Although not a church-goer (of any denomination) my parents both had a strong faith and in this writing my dad engaged with his beliefs and other issues that he felt strongly about; an auto/biographical endeavour then.

He wrote down these thoughts towards the end of the 1970s at the latest, very possibly earlier and it's important, I think, to read the extract below with that in mind. Having said that there's a lot that's relevant to living in the world today.

***

So many sights to be seen, so many things to be done. 
In this world of ours.
To live a life of uninspired existence is an insult to one's very being and a slap in the face of God. 

Who can walk through the birth of an English morning, without the mist in the hollows, the gentle light touching the land, and the awakening song of the birds bringing a touch of tranquillity to the soul? 
Who can drift up the Bramputra (sic) at the eve of night, with the air thick with the heat of day, the vivid-green creepers of the jungle trailing in the water, and the day-sounds dying and the night-sounds not yet awake, without wonder at this planet of contrasts?
Only a zombie!

Who can stand on the brink of a ravine, with the sandstone gash like a mortal wound in the face of the earth, and the mountains rising green and brown and grey and white until the sky is almost hidden by it all, without grandeur and insignificance fighting for supremacy? 
Only a zombie!

Or look upon the smile of a baby without gentleness touching the heart? 
Or stand at the edge of the sea, and seeing the horizon, feel solitude?
Or cry when sorrow bites deep, or happiness sweeps everything else away? 
Or fail to live a full life with joy, experiencing every moment as well as every day?
Only a man who is not yet awake,
A zombie!

And later . . .

To be awake - 
Is not to open the eyes,
Or to come alive to the day after night,
Or to move from dream to reality.
For reality is not that which is around you, 
But is that which is within.

To be awake -
Perchance to Dream,
Of wondrous things,
And glorious deeds, 
. . .

To be awake -
But not to dream,
But to BE. 

And later . . .

Those in peril are the members of the human race. 
Every single being who lives and breathes in the future.
For they can be destroyed.
By their own hand. 
Man (sic) holds the key to obliterate his very existence, 
And to destroy the planet upon which he lives.
He can wipe the results of his own scientific advancement,
His own folly? 
Of course!

Thanks so much for reading. Good wishes for 2016.

Gayle

Lasting Legacies | RememberingTipperty Tapperty Sam

My own love of reading and of books was first, as is the case for many, encouraged by my mother (Dorothy) and father (Ron). My dad was a writer as well as a reader and in his 45 thousand word memoir, which he finished not long before he died in 1979, he recounted buying his first book; a hard-backed version of Treasure Island from Woolworth’s for sixpence (2 1/2p). Good at woodwork he made a small bookcase for an end-of-term examination and filled this and many others, many times over (his taste eclectic) over his life. Writing about his late teenage years my father wrote ‘I was never without a book in my pocket and every spare moment would be used to get through a few more pages’ (Thornton unpublished: 15). 

Some of the publications which featured my dad's short stories 

In addition to his memoir my dad wrote a children's novel and a couple of children's stories; devised a TV quiz show; planned out a novel for adults and wrote several short stories also for adults. He didn't publish all of this but had moderate success with his short stories -  The White Lady of Coombe Dinton; The Severed Hand; The Black Jacket and others   -  most of which were published in the early 1960s.

He was a great storyteller, or at least I thought so; my favourites including a series of tales about the adventures of Tipperty Tapperty Sam; a gnome who lived under a bridge and mended doll's house furniture for a living.

There were less books in the home of my mum's family of origin but she loved to read too and she told me how she spent the first couple of years of married life working her way through my dad's collection of classics, science fiction, mystery, adventure and other yarns and stories. 

Like both my parents I have always read widely and I have been fortunate in my career as a sociologist to have the opportunity to write about my research experiences and scholarly interests (more to follow in future blogs). Following the usual childhood creations I have always wanted, like my dad, to experiment more with fiction and memoir. But until recently I had no ideas about what to write. Following the death of my husband John (who read on average a novel a day) early in 2010 I suddenly had a few ideas, and even more following my mum's death in 2012. Not surprisingly perhaps many of my early (and some of my current) attempts are grounded in, or relate to, my own life; early experiences, reworking of family events and challenges told to me by my parents; adult adventures and engagements with loss. Some of these, and others which relate specifically to research data I have collected,  I have included in recent academic writings, acknowledging that so called fact always includes some fiction and the inspiration for fiction often comes from fact. I am also beginning to explore memoir writing which relates to my academic interest in sociological auto/biography (again more of this to follow on further occasions). 

More soon. 

thanks for reading

Gayle 

Thornton, Ronald (Unpublished) Memoir of a Life (Journeys and Changes ‘A Chronicle of Events)

New Blog | New Musings

HELLO
Welcome to my new blog - Arwenack Cerebrals - sister blog to Arwenack Celebrants. I've been 'concerned' for a while about the identity crisis evident in my writings for Arwenack Celebrants - in which I write about Civil Celebrancy (and associated topics such as dying, death and bereavement; families and relationships; ritual and celebration); about Sociology and about my various writing projects.

So now it feels like the time for a break-away blog within which I intend to concentrate on my writing and my reading. Let's see how it works in practice. . . .

A NOTE ON DEFINITION before I go any further
In deciding on a name for this blog I looked up the definition of cerebral. The result:

1, Of or relating the the brain or cerebrum.

2. Appealing to or requiring the use of the intellect; intellectual rather than emotional.

Well OK, but I'd argue (very strongly) that if we don't acknowledge the significance, the value of the emotional to the work that we do then our endeavours are likely to be shallow rather than deep; superficial rather than genuine; partial rather than holistic.

For me then cerebals (not least in the context of this blog) includes the emotional and as such engages with the heart as well as the head; the heart alongside the head.

That's it for now. More to follow soon.

thanks for reading

Gayle