Maria Donovan's Blog, page 6

A Touching Tale: Maria Donovan and The Chicken Soup Murder — Q& A with Sarah Scribbles

Sarah Tinsley asks some great questions about my novel, The Chicken Soup Murder, plus there’s advice for writers starting out. For the full post it’s over to Sarah Scribbles.

I was fortunate to ‘meet’ the lovely Maria Donovan through a marketing course for writers I did many years ago with Laurie Garrison. As a result, we went on to form the Women Writer’s Network, a great group of women who help to promote other women’s writing and host monthly Twitter chats about all things […]

A Touching Tale: Maria Donovan and The Chicken Soup Murder — Sarah Scribbles

Indelible News!

Free and happening online March 15. 6pm local time is 2pm UTC

SIGN UP HERE!

Monday 15 March, 2pm UTC: ‘Writing in Real Time’ – delves into my attempt to wed my novel, The Chicken Soup Murder, to the calendar. What’s in it for the reader? Why try it? How did it work out? Would I do it again?

Writers and readers all welcome! There will be room for your Questions and Answers too, so this is your chance to ask.

An hour max …

Indelible magazine’s first online literary festival is free and runs for three weeks beginning Sunday 14th March 2021 with Ruth Padel, reading poems and talking about writing a life of Beethoven.

Another highlight for writers wondering how to get published will be Tuesday’s talk by agent Leslie Gardner on the practical aspect of novel writing for success.

Full listings and sign ups are online here for the Indelible Festival of Literature or you can download the full listings in a pdf below.

aud-indelible-litfest-listingsDownload

For my event on March 15 2pm UTC ‘Writing in Real Time’

SIGN UP HERE!

Dropping the Keys

We pass each other in the park every weekday morning at approximately 7.32.

We’ve walked towards each other so many times we’re on nodding and smiling terms. More seems impossible, because she has a dog.

Until, on one of the lonelier paths, my keys fly from my hand, somehow, and land – Ching! – at her feet upon the turd-stained ground. The fob is a grey gunmetal heart, flecked with lost paint. There’s a jingle inside.

She bends down to retrieve the keys with only her bare hands. The dog noses forwards.

‘No!’ I shout. If she touches them now she’ll be contaminated. Forever, she will be the sort who picks up dirty things.

They both look at me, startled, as I search my pockets. No tissues, no plastic gloves. I jam my lips together trying not to shout. In a minute, she will start to run away. I’ll never have a smile from her again.

She takes a poo bag from her pocket, turns it inside out and slips it over her hand. Scooping up the keys she draws the bag around them, keeping them contained. She makes a loose knot and holds the bag up for me to take. The dog puts its head on one side.

After a moment’s hesitation, I reach out. She smiles at me and gives the bag a shake.

We break into laughter, for the pleasure of hearing it chime.

A

A version of this story appeared in ‘The Lobsters Run Free’ an anthology of flash fiction longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2017.

2020 BC/DC

Much to see in the neighbourhood in 2020. Some favourite photos tell a story of the year.   

January – in a golden light, all looks calm. 

February –  We heard the news but still made plans to see friends, and bought tickets for events in March.

The Giant’s waking. The sea’s a little rougher.

New shoots and blossoms.

My last haircut, and a tale of two tickets: never attended, never redeemed.

March. Bad news flew in.

Still there were spring posies.

A last walk on the beach.

March 9 2020 – Seatown: All the rocks exposed. Last handshake – with a German fossiler. Out of habit? Even took off my glove to be polite. Thought at once: should not have done that; will not be doing that again.

Seven days later, lockdown begins.

Corona empties the shelves – except for Corona. We show our appreciation every Thursday at 8pm, from windows and front door steps, clapping for the front line, hospital staff, carers, (food) shop workers, bus drivers, posties, the people who empty our bins – everyone who carries on while we ‘save lives’ by staying home.

At first the garden, a microcosm of wild and edible, felt like the safest place but …

In April we ventured out at last into the view beyond the garden by walking up and over the the giant’s head (aka Allington Hill). Up there were enough paths and passing places. Reassuringly, most people were glad to give and be given room.  

Off we went, first thing every morning. It soon became the best and unmissable part of the day.

We stopped talking, and listened to birdsong, took in the view and saw how everything changed day by day.

The sea, if we saw it, was a distant glint. The sky soared over clouds of green.

May reminded us that nature, given the chance, will go full tilt. Imagine the birdsong. Humans often seem to want to leave their mark.

In June we opened our hearts to the horizon.

Heading for Colmer’s Hill: a path through the small maize, passing poppies and through a sunken lane. 

Foxgloves and elderflower were at their peak, though after mid-June the rain spoiled the elderflower for gathering. Is this a shrew? Small bodies appeared in the middle of the path so often at this time of year – but we didn’t know what killed them.

July – how the view darkened and bleached as everything grew.

The maize that came up to mid-calf in June was taller than me one month later.

July fruits – and potatoes grown in a bucket.

Glad to go out fossiling again. Keeping a safe distance from other people got easier once we were beyond the crowds.

A summer visitor?

Full of life; we’re past the peak, but the birds are still singing. 

August – a month of heat and marrows.

A rare visit to nearby West Bay in late August –  not crowded early in the morning.

Another marrow (aka: ‘everlasting courgette’).

Yet the autumnal colours were already showing: elderberries, berries of Guelder rose, a tunnel of ivy and brambles.  

West Bay looking West and East – late August. Early morning was the best time to avoid the heat and the safest time to avoid crowds. 

September a month of contrasts.

After long dry weather, rain, but strong winds cracked the dehydrated ash.

Tiny seeds on the path – we traced them to the birch (not to scale). No wonder it is such a prolific coloniser.

Some fungi we knew and some not. An enormous fairy ring some twenty metres in diameter developed of these fleshy white caps. The drought that persisted into September did strange things to the parasol mushrooms that like to grow in open grassland.

October – Whatever else was going on, our routines were not much changed – the best part of the day was still the walk though paths that had been dry as bone all summer became slippery after rain and most birds no longer sang, though they might call. The Robin’s song persisted, sounding gentle on the air.

Flowers and fruiting bodies: fly agaric sounding a red alarm from its hiding place in the woods; blackberry sneaking a few blossoms where the sun warmed a hollow. In the garden, quince carried long ripening fruits and late scarlet flowers.

Shadows deepen, the field below already ploughed, rowan berries ripen from pale orange to almost red. Summer’s slipped away.

November How quickly the leaves fall now and every splash of brightness is a blessing.

Trees wave grey bones that tockle in the wind.

After Halloween, follow the jewelled path enriched with black to find the mysterious pumpkin tree.  

December – holly berries ready for the Christmas feast – and the blackbirds will take them all.

Woodland paths are slip slip slippy now at Oak Tree Cross and churned with blubber mud.

When it’s gloomy we add light.  Sunrise on Christmas Day. We’re grateful to have made it this far.

The sea is calm on Christmas Day. Young humans dash into the water!

And round we go – the end of the year, with a tick of the clock, becomes the new beginning. Old and New as the Dutch say. Happy New Year! Welcome to 2021.

New Year’s Day at sunrise; frost.

Mr Bad Neighbour’s Christmas Mail – First Episode

Part One of three parts over three days, this Christmas story is a semi-humorous collection of reminiscences from an adult when he was a teenager.  He said it is a fictional recollection – but is it?  I have retained the way it was imparted to me, with minimal alterations and formatting so readers may find […]

Mr Bad Neighbour’s Christmas Mail – First Episode

I so enjoy Gretchen’s posts from Australia – and this story is a Christmas Cracker! The warmth in all senses is very welcome on this dark and snowless day. Looking forward to part 2.

Bright and Dark

December in Dorset: low sun, long shadows.

Maiden Castle, Dorchester. Full moon before sunrise.

No towers and turrets, but a monument to living in this place. The long bulk of the massive hill fort looms. Cold air in your nose; you see a few sheep, some dogs and dog walkers, early joggers running up the hill.

You climb to where the path, steep and white-chalk slippery, leads down and up again between the earth bank rings. These ridges clothed in grass were once stripped bare, to be seen from far away, startling white or glowing pinkish in the rising sun.

Walking a narrow path across the broad green top, you wonder how it must have been to wake up in this bitter cold.

The hilltop catches every wind, but then there were enclosing fences, and the shelter of round houses warmed by fire. Perhaps, like tipis of the plains, they all faced east towards the rising sun and away from the prevailing winds. There would have been the smell of smoke and cattle, and many people.

A lone jogger runs the far ridge outlined against the sky.

When you reach that place and climb and walk along the top the other way, the low sun is already yellowing the grass. A shadow strides along a shadow ridge as if it wants to meet you at the corner.

Walking into Autumn

Sometimes it feels like an achievement to go on putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes you need to stop to take in the view.

[image error]

As late summer turns to autumn, paths that were dry and hard all summer need careful watching as you walk: golden leaves, browning and blackening, hide the dog poo; slick ground shows the marks of skidding boots. We see a woman walking barefoot through churned mud.

Stopping to listen to bullfinches, we spot a red glow on the slope above. It takes a steep climb up a badger path to find these fly agaric among the trees.

[image error][image error][image error]

Even with hiking sticks, the way down is too slippery to contemplate with a hip replacement so we push on towards the top of the hill. Out in the sunlight, the brambles close in. Being taller than badgers it’s a struggle for us to get through. But there is no way we are going back.

We are laughing when we emerge among cow parsley and tufts of grass to rejoin the path we have so often taken before.

[image error]

On top of the hill the trees are bare now; the wind has blown the leaves from their bones.

[image error]

Dry stalks hold up the last seed heads.

[image error][image error]

On the other side of the hill the rowan berries have ripened, glowed and are all gone. An industrial estate appears through naked trees.

In sombre mood in November we reflect on the presence of a brick structure – a gun emplacement from WWII? We know there were anti-aircraft batteries here, near the coast. And are those craters and dips in the long broad top of the hill really bomb holes? It’s what we used to call them when we were kids.

[image error]

A little pink catches the eye among the dark leaves.

[image error]

At the entrance to the wood is a garden and this holly brilliant with berries. The woman of the house is on the path outside her gate. ‘They will be there till just before Christmas,’ she says. ‘And then the birds will come and eat them all.’

As we leave the hill and the scent of rich decay we hear a green woodpecker high above us, laughing.

Steaming across the pond

Thanks to Becky Ross Michael, a glimpse into the U.P. Reader #4 has set off in me a nostalgia for a place I’ve never been: the Upper Peninsular of Michigan.

Becky Ross Michael now lives in Texas and blogs at Platform Number 4. As one of her followers I entered a prize draw to win a copy of this anthology featuring her memoir piece ‘Much Different Animal’. The U.P. Reader is packed with fiction and poetry, history and humour. It draws you deep into what was for me an unfamiliar and beautiful landscape and into the literary present, past and future of the Yooper. I loved Becky’s words and the grainy black-and-white photos featured throughout the anthology – mysterious visions of a way of life quite unknown to me before.

[image error]

At some point Becky will be able to post her memoir piece on her own blog. Meanwhile you might like to visit her over at Platform Number 4. Her posts always set me on new trails of discovery.

[image error]A post from Platform Number 4

I also recommend the U.P. Reader anthology to anyone who’d like to taste the flavour of the Yooper way of life and gain an appreciation of the natural beauty of the Upper Peninsular, its stories, history and humour. There’s an amazing wealth of literary talent connected to the place.

My copy crossed a continent and an ocean to reach me but you can also get it here on Kindle …

[image error]

I’m going to enjoy dipping into this anthology for some time to come. Thanks, Becky!

Return of the Pen

[image error]The Dorset Award Statue

Almost a year ago, I had the fantastic experience of winning First Prize for Flash Fiction in the Bridport Prize with my 250-word story, ‘Aftermath’. I also received the Dorset Award, sponsored by Antonia, who runs the Book Shop, Bridport. The award includes the loan of this remarkable statue.

It’s a pen!

After a clean and polish, I wrapped it up and carried it through town. It’s heavy by the way. Masks on these days to enter the Book Shop, Bridport, which is still thriving and bright.

[image error]

Here’s a reminder of last year’s happy day – Antonia (pictured right) obliging with an extra photo outside the shop.

This year there won’t be the same kind of gathering for prizes. News of winners will be posted on the Bridport Prize website and the presentation of the Dorset Award featured in a film.

I have to admit, I became used to seeing the statue and, whenever writing days seemed hard this year, felt comforted by its large pointy presence.

A solid reminder that

there are also days of exultation
a story can take time to ripen
it’s worth meeting a deadline
you’d better keep the faith

Now there’s a gap at home, but the statue will soon be encouraging another author. Who will it be?

Good luck to all who have the courage to send their work out for judgement and accept what comes!

Writing on the other side

Every day I go to the place where I write. How do I get there? Sometimes it’s easy. Often I have to give myself directions and a downright good talking to …

[image error]The Slightly Crooked Path to New Adventures

The physical location is one thing: time and space, a place to be. Some writers can compose in their heads while walking, or play the violin to settle the brain waves and get in the mood; others need to shut themselves away with no distractions. I try to be adaptable so that I can write anywhere but I like to use a laptop for prose and prefer to have peace, uninterrupted time and some way to be comfortable so I can keep at it – with breaks to stretch – for as long as possible – ideally, as long as takes to do a good day’s work.

You might have only five minutes before the world impinges or you might have several hours. However long – and thinking you’re restricted is often the way to productivity – it’s up to you to start. This can be the most difficult thing of all. Yet, when written down it seems so easy! Just do it – as I keep telling myself.

A slip of paper covering my laptop camera has this quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi; it reminds me every time I look at it that ‘The future depends on what we do in the present’. (Discuss.) If it’s a doubtful day – when I’m not sure what I’m doing – I use this as a spur and make myself begin.

What if it seems particularly hard to leave the real world behind and concentrate on something you have made up yourself? There are times when writing fiction that it flows and other times when it feels as if my brain is trying to squeeze a lemon.

The world of the story is waiting for me: I tell myself. And since I’m mostly writing fiction that is where I need to be. I might get there by having a tiny scene already in mind or a phrase or two. Or just a picture that moves and has sound and smell and feel but not yet any words.

Once there and writing, that beautiful feeling of flow calms you down, you’re immersed and it feels natural. Time loses meaning and there is only the pleasure of fitting words, sentences, paragraphs into something meaningful, beautiful, funny (fill in your own blanks) following some notion, some line or development, some description of conflict, some character some plot some theme some thing. There are so many possibilities. This in itself can be daunting.

But let’s say you have picked a place to go and you know what’s going to happen. This brings you so much closer to being able to describe it. Don’t delay if you’re worried it will fade. Just get it down.

Still not started? Are you overwhelmed by daily concerns? Is it hard to disengage, switch off from all the trivial or important things that demand your attention? Anything from an item you really ought to put on your shopping list to anxieties about climate change, politics, world hunger. Shouldn’t you really be doing something practical about homelessness?

Again, you are overwhelmed. And it feels somewhat selfish to absent yourself and long to be only where the magic happens.

The beginnings of the C19 pandemic had me so anxious that I found it difficult to take myself to any fictional place where ‘all this’ wasn’t happening. But after a few days I took it as a challenge to go there anyway and almost immediately found it helped me to make sense of things. In giving me a sense of purpose and a focus my writing world became a place of refuge.

[image error]Bring on the Wall

Over the years in which I’ve been developing the writing habit, various metaphors have helped me to get to the creative side. Sometimes I’ve thought of the world of my imagination as being on the other side of a high wall. I can hear the characters from various unfinished works chattering away or think of them moodily wandering wondering when I’m going to turn up. But I have to want to go there, to have the courage and the confidence that I can do it. As a showjumper once told me, you have to throw your heart over first.

This idea of the walled garden of delight always brings to mind the Oscar Wilde story of ‘The Selfish Giant‘ who keeps his beautiful garden to himself behind a wall. He chases the children away; winter comes to the garden and will not leave. When the giant’s heart is changed by the sight of one tiny child reaching up to climb into a tree, which is reaching down its branches to him to no avail, he lifts the child and places him at the top and the tree erupts in leaf and blossom. Then ‘he took a great axe and knocked down the wall’ and in come the children and the springtime. Although the story has well-known religious connotations it also seems to me now to be a metaphor about creativity, about letting all those possibilities in, about the need for innocence and playfulness when trying to make something new.

By innocence I don’t mean that no serious subjects should be tackled but that whatever you’re doing it can be approached as if it’s never been done before, without fretting about comparisons between what you achieve and what someone else has done.

By playfulness I mean that you might write to entertain, and that there are no limits – even if boundaries like word counts are sometimes marvellous for creating a particular focus with more depth than you had been able to achieve in something longer, in which you were more easily distracted from your main purpose.

On good days I know where I’m going before I try to get there. Perhaps after a day or two of what felt like hopeless muddle and meandering, in which I’ve despaired I’ll ever have another coherent thought or find an honest phrase and have wandered round the outside of everything hearing the cacophony and not knowing where to focus, the right thought strikes me and I think I know exactly what to do. Then I hurry to get there. The wall does not exist. I leap it, pass through it, knock it down or don’t even think of it all. The barrier dissolves. It’s a bit like lucid dreaming.

My aim is to make it easier to get there – consistently, every time. Lately, I have been drawn to a different metaphor for ‘getting there’ prompted by the tunnels of greenery formed by trees along paths – of the kind I see on my daily walks. We often cut back the shooting brambles to keep them from snagging clothes and hair. There’s something enticing about the look of a path going onwards. Even if I don’t yet know where it’s leading there’s no need to be afraid. Just go and look. I’m constantly learning the knack of transformation – of reaching that magical place.

And yet there are still times when it’s hard to shake off the way we feel and be creative. Difficulties crowd in: anxieties, arguments, the experiences of grieving. Though inner turmoil and outward conflicts can sometimes form the substance of our work, they can also lead us away from the particular story we’ve been working on.

After my husband died, I couldn’t absent myself from my thoughts about all that had happened – and by continually thinking of him I felt I was holding on to the thread that led back to the time when he was alive. To let go of it, to stop thinking of him even for a moment felt like a terrible rejection of his right to existence. I certainly couldn’t go back to the novel I’d been writing. It didn’t make sense any more to the person I’d become. Although now I could perhaps even go there again – ten years creates distance however much you wish that it had not.

What changed things for me when grief was still quite new – towards the end of the first year – was the knowledge that despair almost brought about my own destruction. And I was given the blessing of a deadline to write a story for New Welsh Review. The deadline loomed just as I was recovering from a major operation and I didn’t think I could do it – I even tried to wriggle out of it – but I’m glad I saw it through, because writing that story felt like my salvation. It was a piece of fiction called ‘Slaughterhouse Field’, written as as a response to Margiad Evans’ novel Turf or Stone. Thematically, it had to do with borderlands. I did it and have been writing ever since. I have not forgotten my loss – but in terms of writing I have been able to go forwards. To try – and more than that – to do my best.

Now the old problem has returned – too many ideas spinning and so I try to remember another piece of good advice that someone gave me years ago: Pick something. Finish it. And carry on. Get to the other side.

[image error]Come Tunnel With Me

And then? A little moment of pure joy. Followed by the realisation that though time has no meaning when you’re writing, you only have so many days hours and minutes of your life left, so you’d better get going again.

Perhaps this time you don’t know where you’re heading or what you’re doing. There might follow a period in which you write to find out what you think. For that I have a virtual diary into which anything can go, and out of which I pick things to develop and complete.

Writing in and of itself is soothing but finishing things gives a special kind of peace. It’s probably why I still go through the torture of wondering what to write in a blog post every month. From what I’ve said so far, you’d think I was saying that only writing fiction can be hard. But no, as the month drifts by, I feel the weight of the days increasing. The day looms, I write the words, I find the pictures – publish. And breathe. Nearly always I think – I enjoyed that. Why don’t I do it more often? So many ideas for blog posts drift past like clouds and I don’t catch them.

Almost immediately, I will go back to writing fiction, a process that makes me invisible most of the time. I’m working full time, every day and I want to enjoy the process as well as the result. On a bad day I remind myself to keep the faith; another day it will feel good and even magical again. I don’t want the transition into writing mode to be something to fear or fret about but if it feels that way, it doesn’t matter because I’m still going to do it.

There’s a jungle of metaphors we could employ – all kinds of advice out there for writers. The important thing is doing what works for you. But most of all – doing the work.

Emotionally there are all kinds of ups and down in the writing life. Sometimes it flows and sometimes it’s a struggle. But nothing beats that feeling of being on the other side.

Thanks for reading! And if you have any thoughts to share about getting to ‘that place’ or anything else, I’m always grateful to receive your comments. All the best, Maria.