Nimue Brown's Blog, page 83

Book News

My Pagan publisher has a sale on at the moment! Moon Books is quite a diverse house, with titles from many different paths, authors and perspectives so if you’re looking for Pagan material, there’s a very good chance of finding something that will suit you. And of course half price ebooks make it easier to take a gamble and try a new author.

Buying directly from publishers and authors is a great way to support people. By the time a book has been through one of those big, third party sites, what returns to the author is small. Self published authors actually do better in terms of percentages on Amazon than authors at big houses. Most famous authors will only see pennies from each book sold.

So, if you’re looking for ways to make your purchasing more effective, going straight to the publishing house in search of books by your favourite authors is often a good choice. I’m seeing increasing numbers of houses getting into direct sales, and this will help publishers and authors alike.

While I could say highly critical things about the big publishing houses, it is usually the case that small publishers are lovely people who genuinely care about books. There’s a lot to be said for buying directly from them when you can.

If you fancy picking up any of my Moon Books titles at half price, start here – https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/authors/nimue-brown

Confidence and Community

Nervous people are less likely to try things. People with low self esteem don’t take risks so easily and may not put themselves forward. Sometimes, what it takes to lift a person so that they’ll take a chance and have a go, is heartbreakingly little. 

I’ve seen this across all the spaces I’ve worked in. Giving people the smallest boosts to their confidence can have huge consequences. Just letting people hear that they’ree good enough, welcome, acceptable, that their contribution is valid can be enough to change what they’re able to do. For anyone leading a space, handing out praise is a powerful choice that invariably brings greater engagement and effort from people.

This is something we can all do. Taking a moment just to acknowledge what someone else did will help boost their confidence. ‘Thank you’ gets a lot done all by itself. Telling people what you liked about what they did will boost their self esteem. The more we build that for each other, the more can happen in a space – be that a moot, a learning circle, a closed ritual group or anything else of that ilk. It applies just as well outside Pagan spaces, too.

Giving positive feedback also has a really interesting impact on the person doing it. It’s a powerful thing, giving praise and encouragement to someone else. If you want to lift your own confidence, then offering encouragement to someone else is a really good way to do that. Of course it also tends to lead to positive interactions. People liking each other’s stuff is a good basis for friendship. If you’re a shy and socially nervous sort of creature and assume that the people who do stuff you love won’t care about your opinion… I can promise you that anyone who appears to be a functional human being responds with delight to being told someone liked their stuff. There are exceptions but they tend to be self-announcing and a bit of observation will flag them up.

When we support and encourage people, more happens. A ritual where very few people feel able to speak or take an active role is a much poorer thing than a ritual where everyone is engaged and feels able to give of themselves. It’s the same in social spaces and creative spaces. The more able people feel, the more good stuff happens. The things that we can do to be part of that are fairly small and startlingly effective. Finding the courage to approach someone and say that you liked what they did is so powerful.

On the creative side, the vast majority of people – even the ones you’ve heard of – are struggling to make things work financially. Second jobs and/or poverty are normal. Most creative folk aren’t in it for the wealth! Which means that positive feedback is precious, and can be the difference between someone keeping going and not keeping going. So if you ever have an opportunity to tell someone whose work you love that it means something to you, get in there. You could be the difference between them keeping going and giving up.

And just to reassure you, this isn’t a thinly veiled request for positive feedback. Those ‘likes’ people leave here on the blog posts day to day are always helpful for keeping me cheered and motivated. I’m currently in good spirits about my creative life, there are lots of good things going on. 

Song in progress

I know it’s more normal to wait until something is entirely finished before putting it out into the world. However, I’m excited about this song, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about processes. Song arrangements don’t happen by magic, and how we do things as The Ominous Folk is quite interesting.

The song then – is about Annamarie Nightshade, a witch from the Hopeless, Maine project. It was written specifically for Susie to sing, and it was written for us by lovely Keith Errington. Keith has been part of the Hopeless, Maine project for many years. He’s written in the setting and he’s also performed with us at events. This is his first song for us, and we know there are more to come. I’ve known for some time that Keith is a songwriter, but it’s not something he’s been putting in public. It’s great being able to give him space to share more of his many talents.

The process then. When we start with a song, one of us will have undertaken to lead on it. Or we’ll have decided who is leading which bits. Where it’s feasible, we listen to as many different versions as we can – easy enough with folk. For covers we try to find a few live versions as this helps us get to know a piece. When a song has been written for us we only have one version to listen to, so we’d all spent a few weeks getting familiar with Keith’s recording of his song.

When we sit down to figure out arrangements, we’re a democracy. We try things and we see how we feel about them. This invariably means that the first few runs at a song are messy and chaotic. We drink a lot of tea, and talk to each other about what we like in each other’s interpretations. Usually once we’ve been through a song half a dozen times we start to develop a sense of how we’re going to handle it, and usually the arrangements start to settle from there. We’re not far on from that point in this video, and the opening isn’t perfect but by the end it’s starting to sound like the song it will be.

It takes a while to sing a song in – this is as true for us as a band as it is for working alone. Learning the words will be part of that process. As we sing it together, it will evolve. Singing from a place of really knowing a piece is always different from those first, more tentative experiments. It will be interesting to come back next year when we have this one properly up to speed and compare recordings.

It isn’t like any other piece we have in the repertoire, which delights me. Songwriters all tend to have habits and we get more diversity of sound by mixing covers, trad and original music. None of the things I would normally do on a harmony line quite worked for this, so it pushed me to think in a different way. It’s good to be challenged like that! There are some beautiful words in there, and the notion of ‘dangerous care’ absolutely nails Annamarie as a character. 

I love working collaboratively, because it’s always a process and because more happens than any one person would have managed on their own. It’s always an adventure, and I’m conscious of being blessed with some really awesome people to create with.

Festive with little waste

I haven’t had a Christmas tree in many years – we live in a small space. I used to have a small tree in a pot which came indoors during the winter. Back then James was a child, and he liked the idea of Christmas trees, so we used to do that together.

I like a bit of cheer at this time of year, but I’m also painfully conscious of how much waste the festive period sends to landfill. As a household we’re committed to throwing away as little as possible, and this impacts on how we handle December. As a Pagan, I really don’t want to participate in the planet-wrecking commercialism that is at its worst for midwinter.

Cyclamen (as in the photo above) are charming little plants. Finding them wild is wonderful because they bloom when there’s so little else out there that’s colourful. I’m aware of a few likely spots for finding them locally. This one came home in a pot, and will live on the altar for the coming weeks. I also have a number of seasonally confused Christmas cacti around the flat. Some of them decided to celebrate Samhain this year, one still has buds on it and will probably bloom soon. The geraniums are still cheery as well.

There are all kinds of ways of decorating that don’t release microplastics into the environment, or leave us with things we can only throw away at the end of the season. Greener options aren’t inferior choices, we aren’t depriving ourselves if we reject throwaway culture. Being able to invest more in the things we bring into our homes is far more rewarding. This small plant will give months of delight, and might survive for years – I have a varying success rate with houseplants.

Handmade decorations, things sourced from your local makers, things passed down in families – these all bring riches with them that a cheap but mass produced item can’t.

Gawain and the Green Knight – review

Adapted by: MD Penman and John Reppion

This is a really lovely adaptation of Gawain and the Green Knight. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, this is one of the weirder Arthurian legends and there are definite Pagan undercurrents here. If you’re looking for stranger and more supernatural aspects of Arthurian myth, this is well worth your time.

I’m not going to spoiler the story here, but if you’re curious it is easy to find online.

I love the art style MD Penman has used here – the whole comic is black, white, red and green following the style of the cover. The use of colours in the storytelling is really effective. The separation of the world of Arthur’s court and knights from the wild, unsettling nature of The Green Knight is handled so well.  The whole approach to the visual storytelling is engaging, balancing between sinister and playful, familiar and uncanny.

Quite some years ago, I had a pop at turning this story into a small play. It’s a curious thing to try and adapt, and I think John Reppion has done a superb job of that. This is a lean script that doesn’t miss anything important. At the same time, the text captures the cadence of the older writing while being totally accessible to a modern reader. You can thrust this into the hands of eager teens and expect them to be fine with it. 

There’s a charming introduction from Alan Moore, and some interesting end notes which will be helpful to anyone new to the story.

For anyone who is into both Arthur and comics, this is a must have.

https://www.moorereppion.com/greenknight/

Dealing with depression

Content warning: suicide and depression

People with apparent mental illnesses don’t tend to fake being sick. There’s nothing glamorous and appealing about no longer having enough willpower to get out of bed. There’s nothing sexy about presenting as so burned out you can’t function. Brain fogs, loss of executive function and despair don’t get much done. Let people see you’re struggling and all too often some bright spark will come round to tell you to stop making a fuss, insisting that the problem is your attitude and not whatever put you on your knees in the first place.

Most likely it was stress, with poverty and overwork the most likely candidates for having made you sick. It might also be pain – people dealing with long term pain and illness often end up depressed because those things are bloody awful to live with. Societal breakdown, injustice, extinction grief and distress caused by climate chaos are increasingly factors as well.

Depressed people are most usually depressed for reasons, and those reasons lack for simple solutions. Anyone whose ‘solution’ for depression has taken them but a moment’s thought doesn’t actually understand what depression is and has nothing useful to offer the rest of us.

What depressed people often do really well, is fake being ok. Think of the number of celebrities who seemed fine from the outside, but who have taken their own lives. Suicides often come as a surprise to those closest to the person who opts out. Depressed people often pretend to be just fine, so as not to worry or inconvenience anyone else. Suicide particularly affects men, and is the number one killer of men under 45 in the UK. A culture of faking being ok clearly isn’t helping with this. Suicide prevention groups encourage people to talk and seek help. For that to even be possible, afflicted people need to feel safe when speaking about depression.

We can all contribute to creating an environment in which people feel able to talk about mental illness, and feel able to seek help. We can do this by not minimising or dismissing other people’s distress, as the most basic level of engagement with the issue. Kindness, active listening and practical support all help. Ultimately to fix a lot of this we’re going to have to dismantle the harmful and oppressive structures that make people so sick in the first place – the current levels of mental health crisis have everything to do with capitalism and colonialism. Whatever resistance we can bring to bear around any of this all helps.

We can all contribute to deconstructing the shame and stigma around mental illness. It’s not a sign of weakness or a moral failing to experience mental illness, its a consequence of being pushed beyond breaking point. As someone who suffers, I try to challenge the stigma by talking about my experiences, and by supporting friends who are also struggling. Where I have the stamina, I will actively challenge anyone who thinks that piling on the hurt and shame is a clever response. Calling out individuals who add to the stigmatising of mental illness can be unpleasant, and I don’t recommend it if you’re feeling vulnerable. Sometimes it is best to just back away quietly. Speaking up when there isn’t conflict under way is also worth doing. The more we talk about this sort of thing, the more people will feel equipped to push back against stigma when they do encounter it.

Seeking feedback

If you have any desire to create for other people, then getting feedback is an important part of the process. Initially it may be the case that all you can do is bring your efforts to the people who you want as your audience, and see what happens. As you grow and learn, your feedback needs are likely to change.

No matter where it comes from, the single most important consideration with feedback is whether you can use it. There are plenty of people who hand out unusable criticism. It’s very easy to rubbish something. People who have anything of value to offer are able to give criticism in a way that makes it possible to do something productive with it. If there’s nothing you can usefully do with feedback you were given, you might as well ignore it.

While general audience feedback is good, there’s a lot to be said for getting more qualified and relevant insight. There’s not much point fretting over what someone who considers themselves ‘literary’ thinks of your genre novel. Paying attention to feedback from people who are working in the same areas as you, or actively choosing to be an audience for the kinds of things you do makes a lot of sense. There’s no hope of making something everyone will like, so it’s important to be deliberate about who you are making things for. At which point you might as well not worry about the people who are not your intended audience. 

As a case in point, I’ve had a few Christians turn up on the blog wanting to convert me. I am not for them, and they are not for me. Christians I can have conversations with about spirituality, morality and service – for example – are always entirely welcome. We don’t have to agree on everything to learn from each other.

One of the most problematic kinds of feedback comes from people who will try and make your work exactly like their work. This is especially a problem when you’re starting out and trying to figure out who you are as a creator. When it comes from people with actual or apparent authority, it can be persuasive. Anyone giving you feedback should be helping you be yourself, not trying to turn you into them. Trust your own feelings in this – if you don’t feel that someone understands what you were trying to achieve, you don’t have to take their feedback onboard.

Being able to offer good advice often depends on having a skills set. A person telling me whether or not they liked something is unlikely to result in my knowing how to do better. This is why a lot of authors will have other authors who read and feed back to them. I’ve had the pleasure of doing this for other people, and I have several author friends who read for me. I also have some wonderful test readers with wider experience, whose insight I greatly value. It’s good to have people I can take things to, especially when I’m struggling with a piece – which happens to us all.

As a creator, you don’t owe time and attention to everyone. It’s not actually feasible, and the higher a profile you have the more time you’ll spend hearing from people with nothing useful to say. I follow a number of high profile authors on Twitter, and some of them get a startling amount of abuse. I’m very glad not to have to deal with that kind of attention and I respect the kind of courage it takes to keep showing up in face of that. No matter what you’re doing, believing in your own vision is vital. Find the people who share that vision, the people who are fellow travellers and who understand what you’re about. The world is a big place and social media makes it much easier than it used to be for those of us who are more niche.

Compromise and negotiation

A while ago, a friend of mine suggested that all relationships depend on compromise. I argued, because I think negotiation is the key and that compromise can be problematic. These days we go into things and negotiate, and no one talks about compromising, which is how I like all of my relationships to go.

Sometimes compromise is the only option, but I prefer to get there by negotiating first. Often, when the default is compromise, what it means in practice is that one person gets to do the compromising while another gets their own way most of the time. 

Negotiating, for me, starts from the idea of doing the best job possible of meeting everyone’s needs and desires. This isn’t always possible. I feel strongly about not compromising on anyone’s needs for the sake of what someone else simply wants. I know how grim things can become when needs aren’t properly recognised, and I know that when people feel able to discuss needs, that’s a clear sign of a safer sort of space.

Compromising is fine when you vary who has to actually compromise. A negotiation that leads to doing it one way this time and the other way next time is a good way of collaborating to make sure people get what they want and need. No one should feel compromised in themselves when compromising over something, that’s a definite red flag.

When people are negotiating with each other there’s usually time to explore how things work and why. Compromise can be what happens when there isn’t time to properly look at the issues. Not having space to talk things through can in turn enable situations where one person continually compromises for the benefit of the other. If there’s no room to discuss things and one party isn’t interested in even knowing what the other person feels or wants, it can be really disempowering for the person who compromises. Being persuaded that your needs don’t matter, or aren’t worthy of attention, is not a good place to be.

Negotiating is itself an act of care. Hearing people out and understanding how their needs and preferences differ from yours helps build kind and mutually supportive relationships. Asking someone to compromise is very different from assuming they will, or making it difficult for them to do otherwise. 

If you’re constantly compromised, and there isn’t room for what you need, it’s a strong indicator that this isn’t a good relationship. The person who refuses to negotiate wants things only on their own terms.

When there are conflicts of interest, if there’s also a real relationship then the only question to ask is how we find the best way through things for everyone.

Trolls and witch wars

Try to do anything and the odds are someone will think it’s a terrible idea. Just taking up space can attract peculiar reactions. Sometimes that can lead to really unpleasant behaviour. I’ve been around my share of trolls, witch-wars and other such silliness so I have insights I can share that might be useful to others.

In relationships and community spaces where we all lift and encourage each other, wonderful things happen. We’re all able to do more and be more. I’ve run all kinds of spaces over the years and there is nothing more lovely than watching how people flourish when they’re given space to do that. Believing in each other, trusting each other and thinking the best of each other invites so much that is good and joyful.

We’re not all going to get along, but the healthy response to this is to move away from people who we find problematic. If a group doesn’t work for you, starting a new group that better meets your needs is often an excellent choice. Diversifying and creating more possibilities is a winning outcome. I’ve been part of moots that formed because some people didn’t get along. While Pagans can be terrible for getting into witch wars, the process of shrugging, moving on and starting your own thing can be so productive, and I think as a community we’re getting a lot better at doing just that. Diversity is good and disagreement should just open the way to more groups doing things in different ways.

Of course if you can persuade someone that they are useless and worthless, it can shut them down. Most of the time this is not a good strategy – it’s most likely to work on people who are gentle, and unlikely to work on someone acting on dodgy motives. If someone is breaking the law, we have to deal with it on those terms and if they aren’t, we should leave them to get on with it, no matter how silly we think they are. Would-be leaders who lack for skills and ideas tend to disappear quickly enough anyway. Loud people who misrepresent the community – which has been an issue for Pagans too – will often just feed on drama, so trying to stop them can serve to amplify and encourage them. Often it’s better in such situations to just offer an alternative.

The appearance of success in some can bring out jealousy and resentment in others. Anyone who sticks their head above the parapet will run into this sooner or later, even if all you’re trying to do is run a local moot. I’ve seen so many friends go through this. It is frustrating to deal with and it can suck up a lot of time and energy if you aren’t careful. While it’s good to be open to advice and willing to hear less than positive feedback, at the same time I don’t think there’s much point paying much attention to people who only ever try to knock you down.

Some people are amazingly good at seeing the problems and pitfalls, and those are great people to have on your team. Toxic people may try to tell you that they are giving this kind of assistance, but they aren’t. If the feedback you get allows you to do more and be more effective, then it’s the good sort of hole-pickng and these people are excellent friends to have. If all the feedback does is makes you feel small, useless or unhappy, then there was probably no intention to help in the first place.

Sometimes good support looks like a person telling you where something isn’t working – as with a good book editor, or a helpful test reader. Sometimes support is having it flagged up to you that you’ve missed something important or made a mistake – it’s good when we hold each other accountable in these ways. If the feedback doesn’t enable you to do better then it really isn’t worth much. 

It can be tempting to try and persuade or appease the people who do nothing but criticise, but in my experience it’s a waste of time. They would be far better off doing their own thing, on their own terms.

Music and magic

Writing and performing music always has the potential to delight and enchant others, but there’s also an aspect of being enchanted by the process.

There comes a point when a piece of music is so entirely learned that it doesn’t require thought. Hands, breathing and the shapes your body must make to bring the music into the world become so embedded that the sounds emerge from a state of flow and presence and it feels as though the music is passing through you rather than being deliberately made. 

I don’t know to what degree anyone listening can tell the difference between that level of engagement with a piece and performing in a more conscious and deliberate way. From a performance perspective, it’s a dramatic difference and allows a person to enter a very specific kind of space. Playing in this way feels intensely magical.

I’ve had a lot of years where problems with my body have limited my scope to play musical instruments. I’ve also had limited incentive – I’m not that keen on playing on my own. Opportunities to play with other musicians have recently appeared in my life, which has motivated me considerably. Re-learning tunes on a slightly different instrument has been a bit of a process.

Yesterday, there were moments of pure flow. There were tunes I’ve had inside me for many years that settled back under my fingers and started to flow properly when I played them. It was a glorious sort of feeling and made me realise how much I have missed this part of myself, and this relationship with tunes.

Most of what I play comes from British folk traditions. I’m also very interested in the work of Irish composer O’Carolan, whose music folk musicians have kept alive. He should more properly be recognised as a baroque composer and be taken more seriously on the classical side – as he was during his lifetime. I’ve been obsessed with his music since childhood, and having some of his melodies back under my fingers is particularly exciting.