Bournemouth

Bournemouth has been a placed I’ve returned to countless times over the course of my life. What brings us back again and again is a combination of things, but primarily because my Dad’s good friend moved here with his family and we love the excuse of going to visit them. We recently went down because it seemed like too long since we’d seen them, but whilst I was there I was reminded of all the things I love about Bournemouth.

It must be something to do with nostaglia, but walking down the seafront with the beach on one side and a multicoloured army of beach huts on the other makes me feel incredibly happy. I like watching the people, seeing everyone else’s faces marvel at the serene quality of the place. When I was young we used to make the walk down the seafront from the pub all the way back to the B&B, and I used to loathe it. It was always too long, and my legs would hurt and I’d beg for someone to carry me. This time it was shorter than I remember, and I inwardly wished for more beach.

Something mad struck me as we walked. I looked up to my left and saw the small rock face  that the beach huts were pressed up against, and I suddenly realised – I’ve written a story set in this place. Things suddenly flooded back to me, how I’d began a story with someone standing at the top of the rock face and looking down at the beach huts and out to the sea. I remembered it all. It was a story I hadn’t touched in years and probably won’t touch again, but it reminded me how much Bournemouth had influenced me not only as a child, but as a budding writer.

It was seeing Mary Shelley’s grave that was important to me. As the writer of Frankenstein, I hail her at the mother of science fiction and didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing her name in stone. We finally found the grave after heading to two incorrect churches, and I was presently surprised to find that buried along with Mary Shelley was her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft and her father, William Godwin – two writers that I’d only just become acquainted with during my Romantic Period Writing module at university.

With Mary in the tomb, although not marked, was Percy Shelley’s heart. The famous Romantic poet’s “official” grave lies in Protestant Cemetery, Rome, but during his cremation his heart refused to burn and remained unscathed by the flames. Shelley’s friends (Byron, et al) had Percy’s heart placed into the tomb where his wife lay.

It was also interesting to note that Wollstonecraft and Godwin had originally be buried in St. Pancras Old Church, London, but were relocated to Bournemouth once their daughter had died in order for the entire family to have a plot together.

I really enjoyed the experience of finding the stories behind how each of them ended up here, and it made me want to reflect on the other famous graves I’d seen through-out my life. My collection is small but growing, and it has made me more eager to expand the amount of graves I can “collect” wherever future travels take me.

The weekend had to come to an end, however, and I’m glad I was able to walk through the parks and roads that I’d loved seeing as a child. Part of it made me feel sad the way things didn’t seem to have moved, and it reminded me of how much I’d changed as a person. I’d begun to leave things behind, but it was nice to return and I’d like to keep the tradition going.

Meeting Darren Shan

Leeds 2016

I’ve met Darren Shan three times now. You’d think that meeting your favourite childhood author loses it’s novelty once you’re practically an adult meeting him over and over again, but I still felt my heart racing and my stomach turning as I walked up to him, and tried to think of an interesting question to ask.

I’ll start at the beginning. Back when I was about 11 or 12 I was given a book by a neighbour titled Cirque du Freak, and reading the back I could discern it was about vampires and a travelling circus. Sounded decent enough, but by the time I finished this book I was completely obsessed with Shan’s writing and his world. I begged my Mom to buy me the next book in the series after I’d finished each one, and once the twelve books of the Darren Shan Saga were over, I continued on to his ten book series The Demonata and every single book he published following it.

The first time he came to Birmingham was a school day, and so I rushed to the bus stop after school with my best friend, carrying our books and desperate to be the first in line. Of course we turned up late, meaning we waited almost two hours or something to meet him. But it was worth it. We got our books signed and picked up ice-cream before my Mom drove us home. I still remember what he said to me when I posed for a photograph with him. Darren Shan strangles his fans as you have the picture, and with his hands clasped around my neck he told me, “Your hearts beating very fast, Rachel…” What can I say? I was nervous.

Meeting Darren Shan for the first time

Authors are incredibly important to young people. At the age I was, all I wanted was for somebody to tell me I could make it, and walking up and seeing Darren Shan thrilled at meeting his fans made me feel so good about myself and my writing. Not only his books, but his very presence in my life was something which inspired me for years and years. And this kind of thing doesn’t stop once you’re not a child any more. I met Kazuo Ishiguro last year in Manchester and was so starstruck that I forgot to speak. I was frozen.

The second time I met Darren Shan (with the same friend) we got there early. Third in line, my friend had decided she wanted to bring as many books as she could and so ended up hauling a suitcase through town full of sixteen of his novels. Darren signed every single one, and was pretty much astounded by our dedication. The fact that he was thanking us for being such cool fans was unbelievable. I think it’s why my face looks rather red in the photo I got with him that day.

Meeting Darren Shan for the second time

Meeting him in Leeds was pretty different, because no longer do I obsess over his books like I used to. Yet, I still consider him to be an important figure in my life, and didn’t want to miss the opportunity of meeting him again. I went with two of my new university friends, and before heading to Waterstones we went to the Leeds Museum and Henry Moore Institute. Not having gone to Leeds before, it was quite cool to actually be in a big Northern city for a day.

We were the oldest people in the line, but I didn’t really care. Darren was promoting the last book in his Zom-B series which is far from good, yet I felt the need to support him just because of how much his books meant to me. Hell, I re-read the Demonata in the last year of sixth form, and it was still amazing. I’d read them now.

The two of us have grown, weirdly, but I think the dialogue between fans and authors is so important just because of how much young writers are influenced by the faces between the words they read. When I met Darren in Leeds he recognised me from a tweet I’d sent just a few hours before. Knowing that you are that close to somebody who had made their living through writing means it doesn’t scare you as much. In fact, it gives you hope.

If you’re too shy to meet your favourite author, then I’d totally recommend you do it. Even if you have to travel for it, it’s a rewarding experience and will be something you never forget. Signed books are a treasure, and so are the people behind them.I guess it’s just Stephen King I have to meet next.

Genrethon Reflection

Let’s talk about the disaster that was Genrethon.

Well, I say that, but to be honest with you I’m always quite proud of what I read. I’ve been up to a lot of things this week which meant, unfortunately, I couldn’t dedicate every day to reading like I did in BookTubeAThon, where I smashed my way through 5 books I a week. Instead I read as normal, and got through two novels and one picture book.

On the Sunday that Genrethon began I had a rehearsal for my play which takes up a lot of my time, so I only managed to read in the evening once I’d got home. I finished off Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham which I’d been reading since the Monday. It’s only short, but I read I slowly because I’d been to the Lake District and Leeds that week.

Day of the Triffids is a dystopian novel, told from the point of view of a man who wakes up in his hospital room one morning, and notices something is completely off. He’s been inside for an operation on his eyes, meaning they have been wrapped in bandages for three days and left him sightless. Fortunately for him, the operation was a success. When he takes the blindfold off for himself, however, the world had turned to complete chaos. The novel was an excellent – and different – dystopia, because it focused on the rebellion of Mother Nature rather than science and technology, or totalitarian rule. It is coupled with the sense of post-apocalypse too as the people in the novel attempt to rebuild their lives after the huge, murderous plants ravage the Earth. Written brilliantly and chillingly, I loved this novel. It is a treat for sci-fi fans.

Once I finished this, I picked up How to be Both by Ali Smith before I went to bed. I was very intrigued by this novel because the premise doesn’t give much away. I also love the way that it was published – two separate versions were printed simultaneously with the two story lines in different orders. It meant I went into this novel very fresh-faced and excited to finally read an Ali Smith book.

By Monday, Ali Smith had gotten strange, so I wanted to give myself a break from it’s challenging narrative. I read Dr Seuss’ Sleep Book which is a poetry-picture book, and got through it in about ten minutes. I never read Dr Seuss as a kid, so it’s nice to read his works now. The illustrations in this were great and I think his books would be good to collect. If you’re struggling with a book, I always think it’s nice to pick up something very light just to give yourself a rest, and this really helped.

Back to Ali Smith, I ‘finished’ this book on Thursday Morning. I was in university all day on Tuesday, on Wednesday I did essays and went out with the Creative Writing Society. Thursday was a good reading day because I was hungover ill, and so lay in bed finishing my reading.

How to be Both collected two stories. One of a painter in the 1460s, and one of a girl in the present day. My copy of the novel started with the present day narrative, and I loved it. If this would’ve been the whole book, I think I might have given it close to five stars. The narrative was experimental but bearable, and I loved the sense of character I got from it. However, once I got to the renaissance artist’s story I started to not like it as much. It was written a lot harder; things were difficult to follow. The prose ended up just being a barrier and completely disconnected me from the story. With less than 100 pages to go, I flicked through the rest of it and said I was done.

After this, I picked up Seraphina. I was in university all day Friday and my parents have been to visit all weekend, and so I’ve only been able to read it in the evenings meaning I didn’t finish it during the readathon. However, I’m loving how fast it seems to go. I sped through almost 100 pages of this in 45 minutes or something, and the setting and characters are completely unique. I’m having a lot of fun with it.

So that’s what happened during Genrethon. It could have gone a lot better, but I’m pleased with what I got done considering I had a very busy week. One day I’ll find a readathon which takes place during time which I’ve got zero plans. One day.

 

Scarborough

Gothic fiction is actually pretty great. In YSJ Creative Writing society we talk about it a lot, as many of the novels in the genre make up a lot of our favourite books. We like to see Gothic fiction as something to do with the supernatural, contamination and Victorian repression, and with two of the committee members studying the ‘Gothic and Horror’ module, it has become a genre we are confident talking about and exploring.

In February we took a day trip to Scarborough with the University of York’s own creative writing society, the Inklings. Initially, we went for inspiration (or really an excuse for a day out), but we ended up taking more away from the trip than we hoped we would.

The weather was overcast and windy without raining, making it perfect kite-flying weather. We ran around for a while on the beach first, writing our names in the sand and dipping our toes into the water which was way too cold to swim in. Far behind us was the seafront, revealing a stack of homes and windy streets which run all the way up a steep hill to Scarborough castle at the peak. The castle looks across the whole beach like it’s staged for a photograph, but it has been there since the 12^th century and was used through the English Civil War. It’s open to visitors during the day, and once it closes it’s nice to have a stroll outside its deserted walls.

A trip to the sea wouldn’t be complete without arcades, and so we spent a little of our time getting frustrated at 2p machines and getting our fortunes told. Stopping for lunch, we swapped writing tips with the Inklings. We discussed how we generate and organize our ideas, as well as sharing our favourite books with each other. Poems were written and read out using the sounds of the shore as inspiration.

Moving further along the literary trail we undertook, the five of us from YSJ headed to Waterstones (inevitably). After purchasing some books we began climbing the hill towards the castle and St. Mary’s Church which is home to the grave on Anne Bronte. It was here where we started making connections with Scarborough and the Gothic. We stood amongst the graves and looked down at the water lapping against the sand, hearing the whistling of wind through the branches above us. It was easy to see how people like Bram Stoker and Emily Bronte had become inspired by landscapes similar to this one.

Walking up to the castle and finding it closed, we sat on a bench at the bottom of the cliffs and looked out to the sea, sharing story ideas and brainstorming ideas. The five of us didn’t really want to leave this spot. Though it was cold and I could hardly hold my pen, the atmosphere was like a machine for generating ideas between us. We were desperate to get indoors so we could write down everything we’d experienced.

The day rounded off when both universities sat together in a pub and discussed everything they’d enjoyed about the day. 90% of people sat with notebooks and were scribbling things down about graves, trees, ruins and haunted mansions. It seemed quite funny that although we’d joked about going to a place like Scarborough for inspiration, we all came out of there with something we were completely itching to write about.

It’s amazing how we manage to find literary connections everywhere. Scarborough seems underrated compared to its neighbour Whitby, but I found its seclusion and uniqueness to be something akin to the isolation and individual feel to books of the Gothic genre. We hope to recreate the experience by heading out on more day-trips, and hopefully uncover more of the hidden literary world as we go.

Today is a new day

How do you feel? Do you feel good? Sometimes it doesn’t really seem important if you have a down day. It’s easy to decide to stay in, watch a film, drink hot chocolate and then wake up in the morning feeling like a new person. I didn’t have a down day though, I had a down three-weeks. I guess it’s not as bad as the down six months I had in 2014, but it still seems to vacuum up everything creative I throw out during this period of time.

I had a couple of ideas for poems and didn’t write them down. They just didn’t seem important. One I can forgive because it was when I started falling asleep and felt too exhausted to get up and retrieve my notebook. But the other I kick myself for. It could’ve easily been written down, edited, turned into a piece I liked. I got the idea in the shower (which is where every good idea comes from) yet it didn’t excite me enough to do what I do best. And it was good.

So the bigger subject here is mental health, and I didn’t want to address it on this blog because as I said, it’s something that sucks up my creativity. But I think it’s important to address these problems when they arise so you can figure out how to fix yourself. I’m not saying it’s that easy for people with life-long conditions, but for people like me who experience ‘slips’ or whatever you need something to fall back on. Right now, I live in a world where if I send out a post saying I’m feeling down I will have friends flock to make me feel better. And that’s incredible.

Some brilliant novels have been written on this subject. It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini is one of my favourite books about a teenager struggling with depression. The Shock of the Fall is about a man with schizophrenia, however I am yet to re-read this because ironically my own mental health history prevents me from actually remembering reading this book…

I’m feeling much better now, because I have set myself some goals. I try to recognize what went wrong and understand my emotions. Once I know what makes me upset I try and stop doing it, even though it’s not exactly easy to do. It makes me feel terrible in both my body and mind and has bad repercussions in both. Someone I talked to said that cycles are hard to break out of, and it’s incredibly true, especially a year long cycle. But after surfacing it feels a lot easier to just let go, move on, start a new day.

My goals aren’t special or groundbreaking, but they’ll help.

1. Go for walks. At least for 30 minutes around the neighborhood everyday. Take music.
2. Stay up reading for as long as you can before bed, because sleep deprivation because I finished a book actually makes me feel better rather than worse.
3. Eat sensibly. No chocolate after Easter because omg.
4. Stop and think about what I am about to do before I do it. This is the big one. I was thinking about buying a bracelet to wear, the idea being that every time I see it I’m forced to stop whatever I’m doing and think about myself in the moment and how I feel.
5. Drink water constantly through the day.

An unpleasant but necessary topic to address. The sun is out now and better for talking walks in. I’d better take advantage.

When I Go To Gigs

If I learnt anything from Thursday it’s that I can pretty much get inspiration from anything. I know people more commonly go for tasteful life experiences to get inspiration; when I first went for my day out in Whitby I completely understood how architecture worked as in influence on Gothic writing and stuff. The Romantics, to over simplify, used nature as a huge inspiration for their poetry and look where they ended up.

So it seems kind of mediocre now explaining that I’ve managed to get inspiration from my first gig in about six months, but that’s essentially what happened.

Swim Deep are a band from Birmingham who supported Wolf Alice at the Barbican. I guess, for the most part, seeing a bunch of guys with long hair, over-sized shirts and colourful guitars made be feel incredibly nostalgic about being a teenager and hoping that guys twice my age would change my life. It never happened, so I used to go home and write things about it. Being a thirteen year old meant most of the time it was poetry about how I was completely convinced I would be ignored forever – seriously things the furthest from my mind now.

Now it’s different. I came out of the gig not wanting to write the next best-selling novel about a small town girl with blonde hair who doesn’t speak yet has the most beautiful smile, and the greatest undiscovered bass player with long swooping hair who just happens to be single. Instead I kind of knew that I wanted to write trash. Seriously. I came out with absolute inspiration to write complete garbage about a failing tribute band who can’t even keep up relationships with girls half their age.

It makes me sad, kind of, if we back track. Thinking back to Whitby, I had all these great Gothic ideas about the landscape and the way the air felt on my skin. I seriously felt ready for people to praise me as the youngest author to win the Costa Book Award or something, because they would see this magical connection to 18th century Gothic novels.

But this time I’m writing for myself. And you know what? I like it. It’s working. I’m ready to write something deliberately bad meant for my eyes only, and it’s made me stop worrying about boundaries and it being too bad to get published. Because it’s not going to get published, this is just a story. I can write something freely, knowing it’s just for my love of writing and need to explore my fictional creations.

Stephen King says to do this, and I’ve known it for a while but for some reason choose not to follow this piece of advice. Being about thirteen I was only concerned with being some young prodigy author, but now being almost twenty that idea isn’t an option anymore. I just want to write. King says you need to just write for yourself, with the door closed, and that’s the only time you can experiment and find your own voice.

So I’m doing this. I doubt this story is going to get anywhere, but I’m glad that I’m getting into the flow of writing for myself again. It feels fresh. If you would’ve told me before this week that I’d be writing about a post-emo boy band then I’d have laughed. But apparently inspiration can come from anywhere.