Maria Donovan's Blog, page 4
April 8, 2022
Sharing a post! ‘Levels of Editing’ by Cate Whittle via Thoughts Become Words
Here’s a chance to check whether your manuscript really is ‘submission ready’. Thanks to Gretchen of ‘Thoughts become Words’ for letting me share her original post with guest Cate Whittle on: ‘Sending Your Book Baby Out Into The World’.
As soon as I read this post on Gretchen’s blog, I thought how useful it would be for writers to think about the sometimes lengthy process of editing for submission. I like the wisdom of Point 2: from now on if a friend tells me I’m a genius I won’t press them for honesty! There are tougher levels to go through further down the line.
Let me know what points you recognise and what took you by surprise!
Gretchen’s post follows:
My special guest Cate Whittle, author, teacher, speaker, offers her advice and experience on how to fine-tune your manuscript before submission to a publisher. Cate’s literary expertise covers workshops, writing courses, book launches, school visits and video tutorials—watch out below for her special MANUSCRIPT ASSESSMENT offer—but first sit back, relax, read ‘On the Fine Art […]
Levels of Editing ‘Sending Your Book Baby Out Into The World’ by Cate Whittle — Thoughts Become Words
April 1, 2022
Last on the card
Post the last photo you took in March – the latest round of the monthly challenge from bushboy. I got this one past the censor!
These are Brian’s simple rules:
1. Post the last photo on your SD card or last photo on your phone for the 31st March.
2. No editing – who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like or the subject matter didn’t cooperate.
3. You don’t have to have any explanations, just the photo will do
4. Create a Pingback to bushboy’s post (find it here) or add your link there in the comments
5. Tag “The Last Photo”
Here’s mine
March 25, 2022
Winter into Spring
Snapshots of the Moon and Dorset with snippets from the diary at what turns out to be a difficult time.
When the days and nights are roughly of equal length it’s time to close the part of my online diary that runs from December Solstice to March Equinox. Anything goes in there from whole story scenes to a very private rant to unavoidable news.
The diary gets too big and baggy if I keep it going for a whole year and takes ages to load, so I divide it into astronomical sections.
Some tiny fragments with photos.
In chronological order:
Thursday 23 December 2021
Language LearningLearning Welsh from the programme notes to Pobol y Cwm:
Mae euogrwydd yn taro Colin fel gordd
euogrwydd – guilt
taro – hit/to hit
fel gordd – like a hammer
Guilt hits Colin like a hammer :
Mae euogrwydd yn taro Colin fel gordd
Would guilt hit me like a hammer be
roedd euogrwydd yn taro fi fel gordd?
Monday 27 December 2021
Something about the weatherChristmas Day was wet and quiet.
Boxing Day: cold and sunny.
Boxing Day. Plenty of people about at West Bay
A few moments later looking the other way.
Ideas/scenes/dialogue for a storyAngela: ‘I like wearing a mask. It’s handy because I’m hyperventilating anyway.’
Monday 3 January 2022
Notes to SelfMy thoughts are like children running screaming round the playground. Perhaps the one I want to pick is the thoughtful child at the back.
Allotment and gardenSunday 8 January 2022
We could grow our own flax. Make linen!
The Last of the Pumpkins
(slumped in the oven for easy peeling)
which can lead me into all kinds of avenues, such as:
Friday 21 January 2022
Looking at the Moon
A Waning Gibbous Moon from my kitchen window 08.27 on Friday 21 January 2022
Below the same Moon phase in one of my favourite apps
Left: Northern Hemisphere. Right: Southern Hemisphere
in the app ‘Phases of the Moon’ for 21 January 2022
Waning Crescent Moon at Dawn
28 January 2022
Tuesday 1 February 2022
A New Moon. A New Lunar Year.
The Year of the Tiger …
The Moon never turns its back on us
in the series: Things I would like to do really well if I had another life. Maybe with a better camera.
to photograph the Moon – advice from NASA
‘Set your camera’s white balance for daylight, and try a fast shutter speed with a smaller aperture’
A spring posy from the garden for …
News that seems to change everythingThursday 24 February 2022
Russia has invaded Ukraine.
I’ve often wondered what it must have felt like for ordinary people when Germany invaded Poland.
Friday 25 February 2022
Russian troops getting closer to Kyiv (let’s say it the way Ukrainians say it).
Radio 4, the Today Programme, focuses on Ukraine for days. I mostly trust the BBC for news. Reporters like Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet (still in Kyiv) have seen what Russia did in Syria and still care about the people there too, and don’t stop sending messages about the situation in Afghanistan or Yemen either, but in the mainstream most other news is blotted out for a while. Floods in Australia? Hardly a mention. Not when Europe is witnessing the kind of times we thought were going to die out of living memory.
Roedd euogrwydd yn taro fi fel gordd
Waxing Crescent Moon
18.29 4 March 2022 (looking West)
Nine star broccoli seedling
12 March 2022
Daffodil with reflection
99 per cent Full Moon
17 March 2022
Life has been evolving on our planet for billions of years and in many beautiful ways. Some things haven’t changed all that much – the way the Moon looks from the Earth, for instance. But humans have the capacity to inflict great damage in a very short time.
Some ways to help:
From the Ukrainian Institute in London: Russia’s War against Ukraine. What you can do to support Ukraine and Ukrainians
Choose Love ‘does whatever it takes to help refugees and displaced people’
DEC The Disasters and Emergency Committee – currently highlighting appeals for Ukraine and Afghanistan
Share the Meal is ‘the world’s first app against global hunger’. You can donate as little as 80 cents (US) or 65p to the United Nations World Food Programme
The Equinox was on 20 March 2022. Meteorological Spring began on 1 March in the Northern Hemisphere and now it is also Astronomical Spring.
I hope there are good things to report between now and the Solstice on 21 June.
If you have hopes and wishes, or ideas about how to ‘fix Putin’ so he will want to make peace, please let me know!
March 16, 2022
February 21, 2022
Wise and Weird 22/2/2022
Reblogging this repost from our friend in Australia just ahead of Two’s Day because I enjoyed it so much. It’s all there (but, sadly, Stephen Hawking is now deceased).
What if my dog only brings back the ball because he thinks I like throwing it?
Wise and Weird 22/2/2022
February 18, 2022
Filling in the blanks
An old way of writing yields new work; I feel a connection to a dear lost friend through her gift of a pen.
In this exhibition, ‘Thoughts on Paper’, artists and writers explore ways of working with this familiar material.
Some of the writers called on to respond to the work of artists in this exhibition faced a conundrum: the curator wanted our first drafts, the more crossings out the better. But these days not everyone begins with pen and paper.
Whereas in the past a blank sheet waited to be marked by pen or pencil, many of us now look at the screen and use a keyboard. It’s a different process and one that has speeded up the necessary drafting and redrafting. It’s been liberating and enabling. And it makes our work look finished – even when it’s not.
For me there were two choices: reverse engineer from screen to paper or try writing a first draft in the old way. I decided that the latter would be the most authentic method for this commission. I found it liberating, with surprising results.
I thought about my friend, Hilary Brown, who wrote beautifully, though she said she did not enjoy it. When we shared a house (mature students both of us), I would see her at her desk, painfully squeezing exquisite prose from the point of her fountain pen.
One of her last acts of kindness was to send me a beautiful fountain pen of my own. It arrived after she died and I didn’t really have a chance to thank her – not as a living person. But every time I pick it up, I think of her, though so far, I’ve mostly used it to write birthday and Christmas cards.
All the while I was considering what to do for ‘Thoughts on Paper’, I had thoughts of Hilary, and how she used to ponder before she could put down a word. Then there was the chance to look through the catalogue of artworks and see what triggered something. The pencil drawings of pebbles by Alan Salisbury brought out all kinds of ideas that mixed with my experiences of fossil hunting on the Dorset coast. The brief was to produce something that would fit on a sheet of A4. That was a help because I could more or less envisage the entire piece before I began to write.
That said, my first attempt was really about the act of writing with pen on paper and how it felt, not about the artwork. But with that out of the way, I gathered myself again and wrote what looks to me like a poem: ‘Rough Notes’.
In fact, although I don’t often write in this way, I love the feeling of drawing words on paper, and appreciate the connection between brain and hand and the tip of the pen.
There is a freedom in choosing where to end a line and begin another that made this spontaneously turn into a poem. I’ve rarely managed any kind of poetry that doesn’t sound like the lyrics to a spoof Country and Western song. I couldn’t take my own ambition seriously, I suppose, and made myself and my work into a joke before someone else could do it for me.
But somehow, this was different. I felt it was a chance to say thank you to Hilary and to honour her by trying to work in her way: the only way she could write, even though she found it hard.
Having tried it, I would do it again, if only for poetry, or very short fiction.
This exhibition and the work it generated put me in the company of friends: Donna-Louise Bishop was one of the brightest students I’ve had the pleasure to teach; Shauna Gilligan is a generous and talented post-graduate I’ve come to know. And I find myself alongside the artist Frances Woodley and the writer Sarah Klenbort.
Hilary Brown was one year above me at University and Sarah in the year below. These are two enduring friendships from my student days, for which I am forever grateful.
I just hope that, if Hilary could see my thoughts on paper, she’d approve of the way I’ve used her gift.
The exhibition run at the Gallery/Oriel y Bont at the University of South Wales until 25 February and includes work by Adéọlá Dewis, Penny Hallas, Richard Higlett, Sue Hunt, Maggie James, Kieran Lyons, Thomas Martin, Phil Nicol, Chris Nurse, Heather Parnell, Alan Salisbury, Stephanie Tuckwell, Tessa Waite and Frances Woodley together with responses from creative writers Judith Goldsmith, Sarah Klenbort, Kate Noakes, Shauna Gilligan, Malcolm Lewis, Samuel Mark Sargeant, Georgia Bolton, and Donna-Louise Bishop (and me, Maria Donovan – ‘that woman who likes sea glass’).
December 31, 2021
12 from 21
Odd looking back through a year in pictures, to see them in a mass stretching back ‘to this time last year’. I picked 12 of my nature photos – it seems I like shadows, odd angles and the sea.
I have spared us from grey skies and rain.
East Beach, West Bay, Boxing Day 2021December. There was this one bright day in our holiday season.
Allington Hill 11 November 2021November. Our usual walk takes us to the top of a hill, where you can see across to the other high places – Iron Age settlements all. For once, the more recent past in the valley below is veiled in mist.
Allington Hill 13 October 2021October. Fly agaric is becoming rare, it seems. This one’s been eaten but from this angle looks like a Pacman of the Woods – about to gobble … something!
Allington Hill, 23 September 2021September. Two pilgrims on their way through Autumn.
West Bay 25 August 2021August. Sunset brings out strong lines and vivid colours.
Red Admiral/Vanessa Atalanta On Allington Hill 21 July 2021
July. I could only photograph this beauty with its wings open because it was dead and lying on the path. Other photos I took were clear but I stood up while this was going off and it seemed to give the poor thing back a bit of life.
Eype. 18 June 2021June. A rare day off, starting and ending at Eype. Lovers of ‘Broadchurch’ will remember this chalet. Closer to the edge than ever now!
On Allington Hill 10 May 2021May. So many photos of blossoms this month, but I like this one of a seed-head, touched with rain.
Seatown Beach 22 April 2021April. A special, sunny day. It made me feel joyful to see the water leaping!
Bouquet du jardin 14 March 2021March. A tiny spring bouquet of primroses, forget-me-nots and ling – from the garden, so nothing stolen from the wild.
Seatown Beach looking towards Golden Cap 27 February 2021February. The colours are sharp and the shadows long.
Seatown Sunset 22 January 2021January. Ending with a golden sunset.
And so back to January and starting again …
Looking forward to being outdoors in 2022! To everyone, best wishes for the New Year.
December 17, 2021
Friday flash – People of the Village
The text of my one-page story – a complement (and a compliment) to Daniel Trivedy’s artwork ‘Welsh Emergency Blanket’.
People of the Village
‘You expect it on Queen Street,’ said Angela. ‘But not right here in the village.’ Though she was munching crisps, her mind’s eye was still fixed on the people she’d seen huddled on benches at the back of the church three nights ago, sleeping by the tilting gravestones, under the stars and crescent moon and ghostly St Ffraid, in a stained-glass window, crossing the sea on a sod of earth.
Creeping closer, Angela saw heads and faces covered, arms crossed, hands under armpits, knees drawn up. October days so warm and sunny; October nights so mean and cold.
‘What flavour are these?’ said Merfyn, picking a crisp from the other bowl.
‘What? Oh, they’re the red ones,’ said Angela. ‘And these are the green.’ So far it was a gathering of two, though the door to the Church Hall was open and the poster said ‘CROESO’ in big red letters and underneath, ‘All Welcome’.
Mervyn studied the packet and grunted. ‘Who were they?’ he said. ‘Homeless? Refugees?’
‘Homeless obviously,’ said Angela. ‘Who knows where from? I didn’t want to wake them.’
‘If they were asleep,’ said Merfyn. ‘Hmm. It used to be ex-servicemen. After the Falklands.’
Angela nodded. Yes, Mervyn had lived in his ugly bungalow far longer than she had lived in her little cottage, but neither of them were village people born and bred. She rubbed her hands.
‘Parky with the door open,’ said Merfyn.
‘I don’t want to close it,’ said Angela.
‘I don’t say lock it,’ said Merfyn.
Angela had mixed feelings about Mervyn: he’d taken a poster, to put up in the community shop, but he’d also told her it looked a bit of a mess. She’d added words and characters for ‘welcome’ in Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, French, Armenian – more and more, until they flittered like butterflies over the white space. Mervyn shook his head over that too: ‘They can’t all fit in. And to headline a few: that’s just making assumptions.’
She sighed. What a pity only Mervyn had turned up.
‘I think you put people off,’ said Merfyn, ‘specifying the brand and the flavours.’
‘Nothing’s compulsory,’ she said, ‘but these are the best: they don’t pucker. And salt and vinegar, and plain – I thought – are not going to upset anyone with allergies, or something.’
Merfyn wiped his fingers on his front and moved towards an ironing board.
‘We could go for a pattern,’ she said, quickly, ‘in just red and green.’ Piles of empty packets were stacked ready; ones she’d collected, processed herself, and brought from home. Her plan tonight had been to explain it all to a group, but through the cutting open, washing, rinsing, and pegging out to dry on the retractable line in the kitchen, she’d been alone, happily absorbed, it was true, enjoying the cold smell of an autumn night, the sound of rustling bushes. She’d kept an eye on the doorway. Mervyn arrived in time for what he called ‘the main event’: the ironing together of the leaves of foil. ‘Overlap the edges,’ she said. ‘Lay the paper on top, press down briefly with the iron.’
‘How hot?’ said Merfyn. ‘How many seconds?’
‘Umm,’ she said, ‘I’ll demonstrate. Listen, I’d like to try a diamond pattern. Like a quilt.’
‘But …’ Merfyn looked panicky. ‘But these are rectangles. For diamonds, you’d need … squares. You wouldn’t have rows. You’d have … diagonals! Complicated, it would be. Wasteful.’
‘We haven’t even tried yet,’ said Angela. ‘Anyway, I could have a go. Don’t forget all this,’ she opened her arms to her handiwork, ‘might have been thrown away.’ It was only time and effort.
‘Ah,’ he said, putting up a finger, as if he had found the point he could drive home: ‘but the energy costs. And are you trying to save the planet or keep people warm and dry?’
‘Can’t we do both?’ said Angela. ‘And try to make it more beautiful? Not – rubbish.’ She blushed. Her first efforts had been a mishmash of colours: just the underside was silver. What did the sleepers make of it when they woke? She’d crept closer and closer, holding up a blanket, for each in turn, half like a mother covering a child, half like a matador. The next day they were gone.
‘You could have startled them,’ said Merfyn. ‘Next time, give me a call. We could have … ’
‘If there is a next time,’ said Angela. ‘Thanks; same here.’ She made the me-and-you sign.
‘Croeso,’ said Merfyn, picking up his iron. ‘Aka: you’re welcome.’
Copyright Maria Donovan 2021
To read about the context for this work please see my recent post ‘People of the Village’.
This is a one-page story (constraints, constraints!), but I have made the text much larger for online viewing.
Thanks to Barrie Llewelyn for editing the pamphlet and sending it on. Thanks to Chris Nurse at the University of South Wales for inviting creative writing in response to the artwork shown. The exhibition in Trefforest closes today, 17 December 2021.
Important! The way this couple are making their blankets is not the way Daniel Trivedy creates his artwork but it is something I have tried myself with varying success and misgivings.
November 15, 2021
Winding Up the Week #196
Paula’s bookdar is second to none so it’s a particular honour that she featured my most recent blog post in her weekly roundup (tbr here in this reblog). Thanks, Paula!
This week we look at books read and reviewed, discover some of the best writing about literature on the blogosphere, take a peek at at two new posts relating to Wales, and highlight fascinating features from across the Internet.
Winding Up the Week #196
November 12, 2021
People of the Village
is the title of a short story of mine written for the Imagining History conference at the University of South Wales. Opening Friday 12 November with an exhibition!
As one of the writers invited to contribute I found myself inspired by ‘Welsh Emergency Blanket’ by Daniel Trivedy. Out of all the many items of interest in the catalogue it quickly got under my skin. These blankets are part of ‘an ongoing series responding to the proposal for Wales to become the first Nation of Sanctuary‘.
The artist draws on the distinctive pattern of Welsh blankets, melding designs onto standard gold or silver emergency blankets of the kind issued in time of need, sometimes to the masses. The result is a fascinating conversation, about heritage, culture, and warmth, and the thin protection offered to people fleeing war zones. My short piece is an oddity, but still an echo of this conversation in its own oblique way.
On his website Daniel explains his reasons for wanting to make art with these utilitarian items and there’s a link to a short clip of him as featured on BBC Two: The Story of Welsh Art.
Daniel’s work was awarded the gold medal for fine art at the National Eisteddfod in Llanrwst in 2019.
My story will appear in the pamphlet accompanying the exhibition and I’m looking forward to reading the contributions of fellow writers and seeing the artwork that inspired the texts.
As a Welsh learner I enjoy having information provided in Cymraeg: imagining history/dychmygu hanes. Diolch yn fawr! As usual, ‘dychmygu’ is an example of a verbnoun and means ‘to imagine’ as well as ‘imagining’.
For more information about the exhibition, and links to the conference, please visit Oriel y Bont. The exhibition continues in the Gallery at the University of South Wales in Trefforest until 17th December.
