Archives as a writing resource

Leicester University is an amazing local resource for writers. With one of their research library tickets (free of charge as long as you’re happy to research on site) you can enter the most amazing worlds, research the most obscure areas, discover the most exciting things.

Yesterday I attended a session run by Simon Dixon and Selina Lock from the Leicester University Library Archives. The aim was to encourage writers to use archive materials to inspire their writing. There were many tables of fascinating items for us to look at, handle and hopefully write about. 

A note about the furniture: The chairs in the Archives Department were older than some of the exhibits and they made their presence known... loudly! They came from the original University College, shown in the photograph on the left as it was in the 1920s. It is now the Fielding Johnson Building. The chairs were rickety, creaky and provided a continual source of distraction and amusement which we were happy to overlook in deference to their age!

Following my earlier post about the decommissioned church of St Peters in Belgrave, I now have a mission to read up about leper windows in general and the leper window at St Peters Church in particular. With this in mind I chose to begin the session at the table with local history books. Burton’s History of Leicester published in 1622 told me nothing that I did not already know about the Burton Lazars leper colony and nothing at all about the church at Belgrave.

I temporarily dismissed my mission and threw myself into the session proper. I became absorbed by an account of a highwaywoman, called Jenny Fox, who choked, bound and robbed her victims mercilessly. She was even recorded to have committed the same “handsome frolick” on her husband. She was finally caught in 1655, was sentenced to hanging but poisoned herself and died a terrible death. Cheerful stuff!

There were exhibits from Joe Orton's archives and from Sue Townsend's, but the final table that I chose to work at had a rare copy of the Wicked Bible on display. This book provides such a fascinating story that I will save it for a whole blog post of its own. But an equally fascinating event happened at this table. I found myself sitting next to a woman who, it turned out, is a Friend of St Peters Church. One of her co-members knows quite a bit about the leper window and she is arranging for me and my co-researcher friend to be allowed into the decommissioned church. How’s that for synchronicity?

Lyric Snippets

I’m often awake in the middle of the night. I try not to disturb Mr A so the only part of me that can be active is my brain. This is dangerous territory. Thoughts can rapidly tumble into places that are even darker than the sky beyond the curtains and so I force my brain to concentrate on one of my many night-time mind-games. 

A few nights ago I chose one of my favourite games, lyric snippets. There was already a song going round my head, Just Can’t Say Goodbye by Lionel Richie. You probably won’t know it but it begins, 

“Here I stand, without an overcoat in January. Where did I go wrong...” 

That gets to me every time. In fact, I’ve written a poem inspired by it.

Last year I posted a blog called I Love Lyrics and a lot of people put the title of their favourite song in the comments below. This time I’m not thinking of whole songs, but just a snippet of lyric, a line that can be taken away and mulled over, like these:

“No one else can make me feel the colours that you bring...” 

Minnie Riperton, Loving You

“What do I do when lightning strikes me...” 

Joe Cocker, Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word

“Sometimes the sun goes round the moon...” 

Vanessa Williams, Save the Best for Last

“Things that we were after were much better from afar...” 

Neil Sedaka, The Hungry Years

Before I throw this post open to you to add your own favourite lyric snippet, I’d like to share with you a lyric-related memory:

When I was at College, many years ago, I was obsessed with song lyrics. In those days, before Googling lyrics was invented, I collected lyrics in a notebook. [Sad, I know!] One day, in the middle of a Business Studies lesson, I was happily scribbling down the words to a Rolling Stones song when the teacher snuck up behind me and snatched the book. He took great delight in reading aloud the following lyrics:  

“Let’s spend the night together. Now I need you more than ever...” 

In those days spending the night with someone was as bad as shouting out the F word in class. I can still remember my embarrassment and a look of utter disapproval and disappointment on the teacher’s face.
 

And now, do please share your favourite or most inspiring lyric snippet. Remember, it’s not the song, it’s a short piece from the lyrics, a thought that we can take away as inspiration for our writing... or even our lives!

My Writing Den

It's been a long time in the making but it's finally finished. All it needs are a few extra cushions and  a bean bag for lounging. It's already inspired me to write a new picture book story. I'm feeling quite excited about this one. It's been a while since I completed anything brand new. [Do you ever get too hooked up on editing old stuff and forget to generate new?]

By way of a reminder, the space used to be a glory hole behind a partition in Daughter's bedroom, and this photograph shows Mr A practicing his amazing DIY skills,

And this...

          ~~~ roll of drums ~~~ 

                           ...is the finished writing den!

And there's more...

This is the view from the window. The garden is yet another example of Mr A's handy work and his favourite place to be. Clever, isn't he! J  

[If you look really carefully you can just see Mabel-the-cat half way down the lawn. It wasn't long before she pattered up the stairs to join me. Daughter's bed makes a perfect cat-day-bed. Must change the quilt cover before her next visit!]

So now you know where I'll be writing from now on. Where is your most inspiring place to work?

What fun - a break from writing!

Last month was an exceptionally heavy writing month. I'd reached the point where my brain had gone fuggy so today I took a well deserved break from the coal type-face and went with Mr A to the Malvern Flower Show.

We admired show gardens:

We browsed and bought plants:

We were quite excited to see Monty Don with BBC cameramen and big booms:

We were even more excited to bump into my friend/critique partner/blogger Alex Gutteridge from Alex Gutteridge Writes:

Bad weather is only bad if you're not dressed for it. We were all well wrapped up.
[I took my hat off for the photo or you wouldn't have recognised me!]

Without a doubt the highlight of my day was buying a heron. [Thanks, Alex for encouraging me to get him!] He is now standing proud in our garden.

And now it's now time to get on with some work. I'm revisiting a number of picture books that have been languishing in my pending file for far too long. My outing has given me a few story ideas, some writing inspiration. What's more, I've got a feeling that a heron might well appear in my next manuscript because...

Y I am now in love with herons!Y

Remember the Fountain Pen?

Pen, pencil, ballpoint, keyboard, I’ve tried them all. I’ve always enjoyed writing with pencil. It makes that satisfying scratching sound on the paper but I hadn’t owned a fountain pen in decades. 

At school we had to do handwriting lessons with wooden sticks that had nibs on the end. We had to dip them into pots of ink. The mess!   

I progressed to a pen with a little lever that sucked ink into a rubber tube but the rubber perished so I got a cartridge pen [which is a bit of a cheat] and then came biros, felt tips and even *gulp* gel pens...

...but if you look carefully at the photo top right, you can see that I have returned to pen and ink. I hadn’t really looked at that photo for a while and then Ann Best mentioned it in a comment on one of my posts. She said that she used to use a pen but she’s now glad of computers because her ‘aging hands appreciate them so much’. I find that my aging back prefers writing longhand but that wasn’t why I decided to return to a fountain pen.

Last summer a writing friend, Josephine Feeney, told me that she always uses a fountain pen to do her writing. She said that it has a special feel to it. It inspires her. Being the sort of writer who needs all the inspiration I can get, I decided that a fountain pen was a must. This conversation occurred just before my birthday. How convenient.

My birthday fountain pen is beautiful. [Belated thanks to Rod or Mr A as he’s known on Twitter J] It’s smooth and tactile. I’m writing these words with it now [well, the rough draft anyway] and Josephine is right. There is something very special about writing with a fountain pen.

Of course, ultimately the words have to be typed onto the computer, my back doesn’t escape some discomfort and it takes longer for me to write and then type than it would if I were to type straight onto the keyboard, but this isn’t about speed. It’s about inspiration and given the choice between speed and inspiration I’d choose inspiration every time.